


pale country

by dirigibleboyking



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-24 10:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7505131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleboyking/pseuds/dirigibleboyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam disappears from the Bunker one day, Dean takes off looking for him. But there's something strange happening to the world- something they might not want to outlast, this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set in some vague post-season-eleven period where nothing particularly remarkable is happening until the narrative begins. Enjoy, guys <3

It starts small.

Thursday, twelfth April. Fifteen people go missing in New Orleans. No leads.

Monday, twenty-fourth of June, in bone-dry Texas. A huge tree, gnarled, thirty years old at least, leaves green and shivering like laughter. One day there's nothing but two-lane asphalt; the next, sixteen bulky feet of slow-drinking wood, road broken up by roots. However it got there it won't survive- but it does. People are already calling it a miracle. There's a steady stream of pilgrims come to kiss its knots, or at least until the miracle repeats itself in Minnesota. There's rumours of the same thing happening in Britain, in Spain, in Norway, in South Africa.

Wednesday, thirteenth July. Poppies bloom overnight in a field just outside St Louis. Elsewhere, wildflowers turn brown and fragile.

Monday the second of September. The O'Connell family haven't been answering their phones. All doors locked, but there's a little window open; their next-door neighbour bravely climbs through. He kind of expects flies feeding at sticky red pools, blood in the cracks between the flooboards. Instead he finds a tableau; all six O'Connells in the front froom, Kacie and Brian on the beat-up sofa, Brady and Marcus in armchairs, two-year-old Sophie on the floor with her scattered paper dolls. They're all asleep. The T.V blares away. A thread of gossamer connects the tip of Brian's nose to the sofa arm. There's a spider crawling up it.

It's been three days. None of them are dehydrated, malnourished, or inclined to wake. When Sophie is moved, old blossoms fall from her hair.

At first, it's an anomaly. When the case repeats itself in Chicago, in Portland, in Corinth, and when the vanished-without-trace stats are five times what they ought to be, and when poppies bloom for a six-mile stretch along a South Dakota highway, it's an anomaly no longer.

Slowly people are beginning to ask what it all means.


	2. Chapter 2

There's still dirt under Dean's nails. He finds himself staring at them while he splashes water over his face. It had been a good hunt. They'd driven back to the Bunker grimy and smelling of gasoline and although Sam was looking out of the window Dean just knew he'd have that pursed-lips-prissy thing going on. And, okay, perhaps toasting the remains while standing _in_ the coffin hadn't been Dean's best idea ever, but the ghost had been about to knock Sam into a tree and what was he supposed to do?

'You were supposed to let it, dude,' Sam had said tiredly, and got out of the car.

Most nights, they turn the lights off in their separate rooms. Dean'll lie on his back and wait, staring into the darkness, until Sam slides in beside him. Last night he'd waited, kept himself awake for hours, but Sam hadn't come to bed. The bed was empty when he woke.

He's not worried, really. An apology, a promise to be less reckless next time, and Sam'll come to him like a lamb. Forgiveness for the little things is cheap from Sam these days, and sometimes Dean even finds it irritating. Wants to say stick to your guns, Sam. Don't let me wear you down. What the hell happened to you? But he gets it, he does. Sam's a Big Picture sort of person and all that matters is faith and penance and perseverence and if Dean let him he'd probably sleep on a bed of thorns. Good thing he has someone looking out for him.

It's half-past ten when Dean scrubs at his face over the sink- he sleeps in after hunts, always has- and wanders into the kitchen, yawning. It's empty- Sam'll be in the War Room because he doesn't do lie-ins- and coffee hasn't been brewed yet, which is weird. He makes it dark and bitter (the way Sam likes it, because he's nice) and kicks open the War Room door.

'Mornin',' he says, just before he sees that Sam's not there. Which means he's either in his room- unlikely- or he's out jogging. Or walking. Doing one of those Sam things that always have to take place at unholy hours of the morning. Dean pours him coffee anyway. If he's running, he should be back soon.

Except that twenty minutes later, Dean's got bacon on plates and pancakes frying and Sam still hasn't shown.

He leaves the food and goes to knock on Sam's door. No reply. He opens it, light folding into the room, his shadow long and alien.

Sam's not on his bed. Or in his bed. Unecessarily, Dean checks under it.

He almost misses it, but there's a small pile of something on Sam's pillow. He scoops it up. Lets it fall through his fingers.

Little brown petals.

*

Dean leaves a plate of food in the oven for when Sam gets back and goes to eat at the table. It's kind of weird eating alone. The Bunker can feel strange, sometimes, when he's the only person in it- strange as if the cracked mirrors watch you when you move, strange as if the walls groan under all the myths trapped inside. Strange like the light is the same whether it's day or night, strange like Dean doesn't like having his earphones in when he's alone in a room because anything could come in and he wouldn't know, wouldn't hear it- but that's okay, because Sam'll be back soon.

He eats. It's kind of hard to know what to do with himself without Sam around. Watching T.V isn't really the same without Sam there; it's not like Dean can do a commentary for himself. And there's no-one else who'll smile in the exact way that Sam smiles when Dean makes a really dumb joke. He tries to look for a case, but all he turns up is a lot of missing people without leads (which has to be bull, because what case doesn't have leads, but if they don't have the info they can't exactly take the case). He tells himself that when- well, _if -_ it gets to twelve and Sam's not back yet, then he's allowed to worry.

At eleven-fifteen, Dean eats Sam's breakfast (and tries not to feel guilty about it, because there's only so long bacon and pancakes taste good for). He spends next half-hour checking his watch and willing Sam to walk through the door. Preferably with some excuse. Best-case scenario: Sam got up early and walked twenty miles to a really awesome bakery and bought pie to apologise for not coming to bed last night and is even now journeying back and will walk through the door any second. Except there isn't a really awesome bakery twenty miles away, and even if there was Sam's got nothing to apologise for and knows it. And even if all of the above were true, it's Sam; he'd probably have run there and back in about half an hour. Well, maybe not half an hour. But still.

By twenty to twelve, he's starting to feel really guilty about eating all the bacon and pancakes (because what if Sam comes back and he's not eaten anything since the diner yesterday and Dean has to tell him he ate all the food, Christ. And somehow that turns into Sam won't come back unless I make more food and _that_ turns into when I make food Sam'll walk through the door). So he makes some more. And puts it in the oven when Sam still hasn't appeared. He forgets they have that oven, sometimes.

For the last two minutes before noon strikes, Dean sits at the table and watches the needle tick round the clock face. It's not the longest two minutes of his life. But of the past month, definitely. Maybe the past year.

At twelve on the dot- coat already on, bag packed, car keys in hand- he goes outside.

It's a beautiful morning, really, and he almost resents Sam because how is he supposed to enjoy anything with this awful creeping worry chewing at him. The road's drowning in dead leaves and the sky's deep and huge and eyelid-pale, trees burnished to the obscure gold of Russian icons. He shouts Sam's name- three times for luck- and checks above the embankment for Signs of Sammy before getting into the car.

Up and down the road, first- checking both sides for sprawled limbs, for blood. For breadcrumbs. For anything. He sees a flash of wet red and soft brown at one point and jerks the car to a stop, heart jackhammering, but it's just a dead bird; just roadkill.

Maybe Sam went out and got run over by a car. It'd be a very Sam thing to do. He thinks If I don't find him I'll call the morgue and then stops himself. You don't save the world a million and one times to get run over by a car. You just- you just don't. It'd be ridiculous. You don't meet Satan and God and God's goddamned sister to get run over by a car. And anyway, there are hardly any cars around Lebanon.

Next stop is the Gas-n-Sip, five minutes from the Bunker. It's empty when he goes in, except for the cashier- it's pretty much always empty- but he forces himself to walk slowly, stopping to look at baby wipes and those shoelace things that movie librarians hang their glasses on and a white wire rack of postcards. He spins it until he sees one he likes- a very zen-looking mountain with mist all round it- and saunters to the counter with it in his hand, trying for a grin. By the way the girl eyes him, it's not convincing.

'Nice day,' he says as he pays.

'Yeah,' she says. He's seen her in here before; cornrows, lip gloss, fingers thick and impatient on the cash register. He clears his throat too loud. 'Hey,' he says. 'Have you seen a guy in here this morning? Real tall, long hair?'

She frowns without looking round. 'He the guy who comes in with you?'

He hadn't realised she'd taken notice. 'Yeah. That guy. You seen him around?'

A head-shake. Her cornrows bounce. 'Sorry. Not seen him today.'

'Ah,' he says. It's stupid for his stomach to drop like that. It was a long shot anyway. Sam's not keen on gas station food. 'Okay. Well. If you do. See him. Could you-'

'How about you write your number down,' she says, voice bored. 'I'll call you if he comes in. He ain't exactly easy to miss.'

He gives her his number. Postcard in hand, he's going for the door when her voice comes- 'What is he, your boyfriend or somethin'?'

'Or somethin',' Dean says. He wants to smile at her but he can't.

*

He drives through Lebanon, slowing down to look out the window. Every moment he expects to see Sam, and every moment he's beginning to suspect, somewhere in his bowels, that he won't. Thinks that he could almost die with the need to catch sight of Sam just round this corner. Keeps waiting for the lurching moment when he spots that mop of hair. Every time someone comes into view his gut wrenches, even if they look nothing like Sam. It's cruel, cruel in a familiar way, and there's a sickening feeling of being back a decade ago and looking for Sam for days before realising he was possessed by Meg. All that time there had been this idea, sitting at the back of his mind like some bloated pale monster, that he was never going to see Sam again. That all they'd been through had been wiped away, just like that. That Sam's whole existence had been reduced to an absence, that that absence would inevitably take the place _in memoriam_ of how Sam had been, how bold and sweet and kind and scary he'd been when he was here. Dean can't feel that way again. For years it's been something to keep him going, thinking at least he's here, at least when he goes missing I know where he is, at least I'm not dying that particular death- and a kind of prayer, too. Don't ever make me go through that again. A sobering knowledge that it could be worse, that their lives were fragile and Dean could well have to relive that at some point. A reminder that he had to take happiness where he could get it.

If what they've just been starting to build up was all the happiness they got- if that was the last he ever saw of Sam- if the day is come when he does have to relive that-

But this is getting out of hand. Sam's been missing for, what? Seven hours? Seven hours is nothing. Seven hours isn't long enough to start thinking the worst. Sam would be pissed. Sam would raise an eyebrow and say something that set Dean's mind to rest whilst simultaneously being sincere and intelligent and a Kafka reference. If Dean goes all maudlin and starts thinking he's never going to see Sam again after seven fucking hours then, heck, he might as well throw in the towel. Hand the case to the Feds or some shit. If he thinks it then it could make it real, make it a possibility, make it valid. And it's not valid.

Sam'll probably be waiting for him when he gets back to the bunker. Maybe he went deep into the archives and just spent all day researching. In fact that's by far the most plausible solution. He'll come out with dust in his eyebrows. With his hair pulled back into one of those cheap scrunchies and a box of the kneecaps of lesser Dominican monks or something under his arm. Dean'll hug him (if this happens, Dean, if, don't jinx yourself, something bad could well have happened to Sam, look at your lives) and ask where the hell have you been, I was so worried, I love you so much, why do you keep scaring me like this, where do you get off on making me worry about you, how dare you not eat anything all day, how dare you not tell me where you were, do you know how worried I was, do you know how scared I was, do you know how I asked at every door, I thought that this was it, I thought that our happiness was over before it had barely begun, I should have made you happier while I had the chance, let me feed you, let me bundle you into the shower, let me get the dust off you, Jesus Christ you're still filthy from the hunt, Jesus Christ you just don't get it, you don't know how scared I was getting.

He drives back at a lesiurely pace, taking his sweet time, because the longer he takes the more time he gives Sam to re-emerge from wherever he's put himself, the more time he gives Sam to be waiting for him when he gets there, and when he's got a hand on the Bunker door he has to close his eyes for a second because what if he's not there. What if he's not there after all this. What then. What does he do then.

How is he supposed to open this door when he's half-expecting to see Sam bleary-eyed and sleep-creased and soft as all hell, and when he's half-expecting to see nothing and when he's already anticipating the way his gut'll lurch at the Lack of Sam- how is he supposed to open this door. His hand clenches uselessly on the wood. Dean has these moments, sometimes, where he looks at Sam and thinks That person is your soulmate. Look at him. Look how beautiful he is. Somehow these moments are stopping him from opening the door.

It's like ripping a band-aid off. He has to at some point. Sooner rather than later. He doesn't do it. He's too scared. He's blown this out of proportion but he needs Sam to be there.

He's being ridiculous. Worst-case scenario, Sam's not there. That means he's been missing for about eight hours. It's not the end of the world. Dean's dealt with worse. Nothing could be worse than knowing Sam was in Hell while Dean lived a cushy civilian life. But, God, this wasn't supposed to be the kind of day that he had to compare to Sam being in Hell just to make the current situation look good. This wasn't supposed to be that day. Dean had been going to get Sam to watch Resident Evil with him. Or some porn, at the very least. Screw Sam's selfish ass, what's he doing going missing for eight hours?- when he knows that that'd fuck up their plans. They won't get to watch anything if Sam doesn't show soon. Before he can think about it any farther Dean's shoving open the door, unable to stop himself from dashing to the balcony so he can see-

He casts his eyes around, searching frantically for a good ten seconds. Checking and re-checking; just to be sure.

No Sam. It doesn't provoke the violent physical reaction he'd expected in himself. Not even a swooping feeling in his gut. At least he knows now. And if Sam's not in Lebanon or in the War Room then, very probably, he's elsewhere in the Bunker. Maybe he locked himself in somewhere by accident. Or got sucked through to Oz or something. Or something. Knowing Sam.

Knowing Sam.

*

There's got to be at least a couple hundred rooms in the Bunker. He doesn't think he's even been in all of them. Huge rooms that stretch darkly back for hundreds of feet, filled to bursting point with old books and shelves and shelves of junk, one-eyed teddies with weird hinged limbs and intricately painted clay beads clustered and pooling everywhere, ancient mugs with coffee hardened to silt at the bottom. Tiny rooms the size of cupboards, crammed with dusty books and cat skeletons and boxes of tiny, glittering, disgustingly dead beetles. He doesn't explore properly, doesn't look through any of the old stuff the way Sam loves doing (Sam could spend goddamned months down here, it almost makes him jealous sometimes, the fact that apparently a bunch of mouldy books could be so damn fascinating to him.)

He yells Sam's name more times than he can count. Until his voice is scratchy. In some rooms, it echoes (Hell echoed sometimes, which you wouldn't really expect, and sometimes it groaned and churned and whistled like an old broke machine. He wonders, briefly, how far the Bunker extends into the earth. If they can expect the ground to just collapse on them sometime; perhaps in the middle of the night, when they're asleep; when they won't know what's happening.)

He doesn't waste time on details; not yet.

Every half-hour or so he stops searching and goes back to the War Room, just in case Sam's come back. Every time he opens a door to see No Sam he becomes a little more frantic. Every time he shines a torch on a dark corner to see No Sam he tells himself next room, next corner, he'll be there. Beginning, slowly, to know that he won't. Beginning to let himself know that (on the off-chance that his pessimism will increase the likelihood that Sam is, in fact, within reach).

The Bunker's corridors are labyrinthine. After the third time he gets lost (resulting in time wasted as he tries to get back to the center, in thinking Sam could be here he could have gotten back and I would have missed it), he finds a piece of chalk in one of the rooms. From then on he makes a red X on every door he goes past.

Once he's gone through every room, he doubles back and checks again, just in case he and Sam have passed each other or something. Time passes in jolts and crawls. He looks his watch to see that it's only half past three; next time he checks it's a quarter to nine and every door has three crosses on it. He's starving. Beyond exhausted, and strangely close to tears. It's becoming apparent that Sam isn't anywhere within the Bunker. That's another easy fix ruled out and he should have known, really, because when is it ever the simple option with them. But now he's wasted hours during which Sam could be somewhere, hurt, terrified, dying. He's got to waste more time just doing shit like eating and walking around. He's got no leads. Something could have taken Sam, but who the fuck knows what. Sam could be possessed again, but that could leave them anywhere and he hasn't smelled sulphur at all, though that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

At nine, Dean gets together a quick-and-dirty ritual and does what he should have done right at the start. He summons Crowley.

As he holds the match to the powder, he hesitates a second. If Crowley doesn't come- now of all times- fuck. 'You better show,' he tells the flame. 'You fucking better.' He's never wanted to see that smarmy face so bad before. 'If you don't, I'm going to come down there, and I'm going to rip your bowels out. I mean that.'

He touches the flame to the power. Expecting the sound of feet, for measured tones saying something like 'Why, Dean, what a pleasant surprise.' Closes his eyes. He'll take any amount of shit from Crowley if he'll just appear.

When it's been a minute and Crowley hasn't appeared, he feels like sinking to the floor. He doesn't. He clenches his jaw so hard he can feel a muscle ticking and starts brainstorming, staying beside the summoning equipment- he hadn't used a devil's trap, just to provide incentive- on the off-chance that Crowley shows up late.

As he writes he presses against the notepaper so hard the pen shows through on the other side.

SAMMY

1\. Something took hi

2\. Compelled (threatened, blackmailed, mind control??) to leave by himself

3.

He hesitates. But, fuck, it's a possibility. Technically.

3\. Left by himself

After a moment he crosses that one out. Scribbles over it until he can't make out the words. He'd be wronging Sam just by suspecting that. Sam wouldn't leave. He's been happy lately; Dean can tell. Anyway, even if he did leave he'd talk to Dean about it first. Let him know, at least.

(It's still not enough. He tears that bit of the paper off and burns it in his coffee cup.)

So that just leaves 1) and 2).

There are plenty of people with grudges against them. Maybe a hunter who hasn't got the memo that Armageddon's over. Maybe the family of a monster they killed. The question is, when could something have taken Sam? After the hunt, they hadn't got back to the bunker til about two in the morning. He tries to think whether Sam had gotten out to get gas or anything during the drive, whether there was any point where a shifter or something could have jumped him and taken his place, but he's sure it was a straight drive. Not even a pee stop. And Dean watched him walk into the Bunker, he distinctly remembers because when Sam had gotten to the door he'd turned around and frowned at Dean and yawned and said 'Dude, stop ogling my ass.' And then they'd gone in. And into their seperate rooms. And he hasn't seen Sam since. So either something must have gotten into the Bunker itself and taken Sam, or Sam went on a run or something and was taken then. And highly unlikely as it is that something did get into the Bunker, at least this is something he can check.

It takes him a ridiculously long time to remember about the petals he'd found on Sam's pillow. But even once he does, it doesn't do much good. He can't think of any monsters- at least ones that could make it past the wardings- that leave rotting petals behind when they take their victims. Tries googling it, but all that comes up is something about increased flower death over America.

Crowley still hasn't shown. Sam's been missing for about fifteen hours. Fuck. Time to call Cas.

He goes into Sam's room. Starts thinking out what he's going to say, weirdly nervous. He should have done this sooner, but that would have meant admitting that something was wrong in a way that he couldn't fix. In a way that couldn't end with he and Sam on his bed watching Resident Evil. And it sucks that he's thinking this but honestly, Cas has this way of making things even more complicated than they already are. But he cares about Sam. Even if he can't help he deserves to know that something's up. And something is definitely up.

Dean starts turning out Sam's drawers- 'Sorry, kiddo,' he says, because Sam likes his privacy and God knows he's entitled to it, but this really can't be helped. Sam's got these two fancy tops specially for running, ones Dean bought for him ( _completely_ unprompted, because he's a nice guy). If Dean can find them both, that means he didn't go running. Which makes it a hell of a lot more likely that something took him from the bunker. Or that he was coerced into leaving.

'Cas,' he says as he chucks endless piles of plaid and denim onto Sam's bed. Jesus, Sam needs new shirts. As soon as he gets him back they'll sort that. He'll take Sam to a fancy department store in a city or something. 'Hey, man. Look, I know you're probably not having an easy time of it right now, wherever you are-' because when _are_ you having an easy time of it- 'and I hate to put pressure on you, buddy, but I need your help. Like, right now.' He pauses. Just to convey the gravity of the situation. Even if Cas doesn't always get stuff like that. 'It's Sam,' he says darkly.

He counts to five. Looks around the room. No signs of Mr Angel. It just figures that this would happen today. Dean throws more shirts onto the bed. All Sam's other clothes seem to be here- which just serves to show that, yes, option three was delusional. As he already knew. And it deserved to be torched in a coffee cup.

(He can't help being glad about that, just a little bit. It feels horrible to be glad that Sam's been taken somewhere by force, but rescues are something he can do; he doesn't think he could go and pull Sam away from a happy domestic life again.)

In drawer three he hits jackpot: both Sam's running shirts are here. So in all likelihood, Sam was in the bunker when something whisked him away. Or compelled him to whisk himself away. Which should narrow it down quite a bit, except it doesn't, not really. It's not true that the Bunker's impenetratable; shit gets in here all the time. It's just that that shit is usually human. Like the Stynes. And Dean has a hard time believing that a human could yank Sam away without some sort of noise or struggle. Amara and Chuck could get in, of course, but as far as he knows they're still off on their God Sibling Honeymoon (TM) and anyway why the fuck would they want to take Sam?

The problem is that _everything_ is unlikely, so Dean's left with an entire world full of suspects. Judging from the lack of signs of a struggle, and the fact that Dean didn't wake, he'd say maybe they threatened him, made Sam keep quiet on pain of Dean's life. His chest constricts.

It's then that he comes back to himself; he's sitting on the bed with one of Sam's shirts pressed to his nose. He's not sure when that happened. Christ. It hasn't even been a day.

If the sole aim had been to kill Sam, whoever got in could have murdered him in his sleep. The assumption, then; somebody wants to see him suffer. See them both suffer, maybe. He's beginning to realise how vulnerable they are when they stay put, wardings or not. Motels were anonymous. Hard to trace. This place is a beacon. Sam was taken from their _home_.

Whatever took Sam could still be here.

He pushes the thought back. One thing at a time. Anyway, fuck it, he doesn't care. At least if it took him he might get to see Sam again. (Shut the fuck up, Dean, you'll see him again.)

The shirt smells like libraries. And the booming weighted silence of a church. And fancy conditioner. And melted snow. And rain. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Sam Winchester.

He needs a drink. It's the first time in weeks that the feeling's come to him so clearly. His mouth's dry. Lips starting to crack. Maybe it'd help.

But. Sam. Sam would be so disappointed. Sam would be so sad. (Sam would give him those eyes.)

He doesn't need a drink.

*

No sleep for Dean that night. It seems awful to rest even for a second. Awful and callous and cruel when time could be the difference between Sam living or dying. When even as he's snoozing on memory foam Sam could be being tortured in a dingy cellar somewhere. (He used to have nightmares when Sam was in Hell. It got so bad after a while that when Lisa asked him to see a therapist he caved without any fuss. Hated himself for it, as if he was somehow failing to acknowledge Sam's suffering. The nightmares stopped. The only way to carry the weight of what was happening to Sam was by forgetting about it whenever he possibly could. It felt like a betrayal not to think of that every moment; not to pay homage to that, even though he knew, he knew that Sam would want him to enjoy his life. It felt blasphemous.) He uses his shoulder to press his phone to his ear, making call after call as he turns Sam's room inside out.

Not everyone picks up, probably because it's three in the fucking morning, but Dean still wants to yell down the line at them to pick the fuck up, don't you feel it, don't you get that this is the most urgent thing you'll deal with in your life? My kid brother saved the world and you can't pick up the fucking phone for him? Everyone who does- Garth, Tracey and Krissy among them, though Jody and Alex and Claire don't answer- he tells that Sam is missing. There's a tiny bit of him that's brightly painfully waiting for someone to say I was just about to call you, I rescued the kid half an hour ago, he's here in my backseat, his nose is bust but he's okay and when one guy, a hunter called Wade, actually says _hey, I was gonna call you_ Dean's heart races. Turns out ol' Wade has his eye on a wendigo case he thought they might take.

'Sorry, man,' says Dean, when he can speak again. 'We don't do wendigos anymore. Too messy, y'know?'

By this time he's turned out all the contents of Sam's dresser. Everything's folded into these long beautiful heron lines- not unlike Sam himself- and, also not unlike with Sam, he shakes them out without remorse. Dean knows where to stop these days, no more stuffing rogue angels in where they don't belong, but if it's a choice between Sam and Sam's intact bedroom- well, it's not as if Sam'll get to see his room ever again if Dean doesn't get him back, so he might as well have his wicked way.

There's nothing too revealing. He's glad. There's so little left of Sam that hasn't been peeled open; Dean isn't ruthless enough to want to see more. He finds a slim black book wedged right at the back of a drawer, but it's crammed with unintelligable strings of letters and numbers and symbols. It looks like code, which means that Dean can't crack it, because it's Sam and Sam won't have used the A = 1 system. There's also absolutely zero sign of anything porn-related, which, come on. Imagination rules the world, yes, Dean's aware, but not even Sam's imagination is that efficient. And there is zero fap material in this room. None. Nada. It's ridiculous. They will be having a deep and serious conversation about this. Sometime.

(He needs a fucking drink.)

(He needs a fucking drink.)

He makes herbal tea.

He hates herbal tea.

Maybe if he drinks Sam's herbal tea Sam'll storm through the door and demand the single herbal teabag back.


	3. Chapter 3

For someone who tried so hard not to mark what he touched, to move through the world without sullying it, Sam's fingerprints are everywhere. Now that he's missing he takes up so much space. His purple toothbrush next to Dean's. A post-it note covered in his scrawl stuck to the fridge.

He's going crazy from how much of Sam is here with him. There's something in every room, no matter how small- even if it's just his smell clinging to a towel, a long brown hair in the sink. All manner of tiny details, and some of them are even kind of gross. Sammy used to live like a ghost, not letting himself spill out to occupy a space. Lately it seems that he's been slipping.

Dean can't help thinking, at one point, Why now. Why is it that as soon as Sam's presence becomes tangible, as soon as he begins to accept to fact that this is their space, he has to go missing. (He is missing. It's been a day. He can't not be missing.) Why is it that as soon as Sam starts to let himself have something it gets pulled away. Why is it that the world just can't give the kid a break. Why is it that the world just can't give Dean a break, and just for a second he lets himself be selfish because he deserves it. Why can't Dean just- not have to worry about Sam for a while. Who said that this would be his life, this constant terror that the person who is everything to him is suffering for being just that. Why can't he- just forget that Sam exists, just for one goddamned moment. He needs this weight off him. He thought they were in the clear. There was nothing wrong with them or the universe for the first time in ages. They were starting to find out who they are when they weren't scared all the time. Dean was starting to find out that when Sam isn't scared he loves to sleep, maybe just for the feeling. That Sam takes ridiculously long showers when he isn't scared, steams up the shower room like nothing he's ever seen. That sometimes, when he thinks no-one's listening, he sings to himself- only quietly, barely above a murmur. Judy Collins, the Beatles, the Killers. That when Sam prays, he's thankful. He's always been thankful when he prays, but these days he means it.

And when Dean's not scared all the time, he loves life. He cooks. He's started keeping this little blue box in the kitchen with bits of paper that he's put tried and tested recipes on. Fuck it, there's still banoffee pie in the fridge, left over from the other night. 'This is a compomise,' he'd informed Sam, bringing it to the table. 'See, on the one hand, it's pie. But on the other hand, bananas. They're fruit, right?'

Sam, thank God, had seen the gesture for what it was, laughed, and eaten three slices. There's only one left. He's never felt less like eating. He may never be able to look at pie, or bananas, again after this.

Still, though. That sucks. To never have quite enough food as kids- even into adulthood- to be throwing luxuries away now that they've settled down. He doesn't know why this matters so much to him in the face of what's happening, but it does. He eats it as he's making one last comb through the Bunker. The worst part it, he actually enjoys it. It tastes good. He hadn't realised that he was hungry, had put down the ragged ache in his stomach to Sam. But he feels better now. And worse. Because wherever Sam is, three square meals is probably not on the agenda and fuck it all, he'd barely got him eating properly.

This day is slowly becoming an exercise in not-drinking.

He keeps meaning to leave the Bunker, to scout through the streets, but instead he finds himself staring at his watch and thinking if Sam doesn't come in by eleven, I'll leave. Eleven strikes; it turns into if Sam doesn't come in by twelve, I'll leave. Maybe it's self-torture but he feels like the exercise gives him back a modicum of power, tells himself that if he waits long enough before going out Sam will stumble in while he's gone (because that's always how these things work). And Dean doesn't even care that if that happens he won't know until he arrives back that Sam is safe. At least it would mean that this situation is salvageable.

Eventually this turns into not wanting to leave, because if he arrives back and Sam isn't here a bit of him might break off.

Instead, he takes Sam's laptop. First he looks through his files, but the pictures are mostly close-ups of crime scenes emailed to him by other hunters and the documents section is basically all research. A couple files are encrypted, but Dean has no clue how to hack into them. Maybe he could find somebody to do that. Anything that might help. The music is mostly nine-hour recordings of rain sounds. Maybe it's a stress relief thing. He wonders if Sam ever heard the sound of rain while he was in Hell. Wonders if that's why Sam loves the shower room so much.

(There are so many, many things that he never dared to ask. He hopes that when he gets him back he'll be brave enough to, but he kinda knows he won't. It's okay; some stuff he doesn't really want to know anyway.)

He goes through the news, and there he does hit something. Over the world people have been disappearing without trace, and the worldwide disappearence stats have quintupled over the past three months. In some of these disappearences, the presence of flowers left behind has been noted. There's talk of copycat kidnappers, worldwide phenomena.

Dean wonders what monster fits this profile. No signs of violence. Signs its work, but only sometimes.

The most alarming thing, he decides, was that it didn't look as if Sam had struggled. Fuck the fact that he was asleep. Fuck the fact that they could have drugged him. Sam always struggles. This cannot be humans.

Whatever monster did this, perhaps they came to Sam in the form of a loved one.

He thinks, matter cannot be created or destroyed. Sam still exists, somewhere, on some plane. He is out there. There are however many square feet of America that he could be in. If he has to, Dean will comb through every single one.

*

The only reason Dean leaves the Bunker, in the end, is that he knows he'll start in on the whiskey if he stays any longer. Maybe even the vodka. It's been that kind of day. Of course, being piss-drunk wouldn't necessarily impede his ability to search for Sam, but he's beginning to connect it with the idea of Sam's return. If I don't drink, they'll give him back to me. If I don't walk on the cracks, they'll give him back to me. If I put all his things exactly where I found them, they'll give him back to me. He's fully aware that these are coping strategies. Things humans do to help themselves function in times of great emotional stress, to help them feel like they have power over a situation's outcome. But fuck it, he's a human, and he's under great emotional stress. He's entitled.

Anyway, avoiding bad luck can't hurt.

Maybe even more than that, he can't stop seeing- whenever he nearly goes for the bottle (theoretically they don't keep anything stronger than beer in the Bunker anymore, but Dean's got some potent stuff at the back of his closet)- how disappointed Sam would be. How he'd inevitably blame himself for being taken, for driving Dean back to drinking. How he wouldn't be angry in the slightest.

He thinks that when Sam gets back he wouldn't mind making him angry. Really, really, furiously, poke-a-bear-with-a-stick, red-rag-to-bull angry. In fact, he'd love to see that. It can't be healthy to be as well-adjusted as Sam. Nothing ever seems to rile him anymore, that's the problem; at least, nothing Dean's willing to resort to.

It's three days before his conviction that Sam could walk back in slips away. It had vanished after the first day, really; it's just that there was still some thread of feeling that it could happen, that Sam could Be Okay, that he'd bring himself back and that Dean needed to be around to see it. That if he set out to look for Sam too soon, he could miss Sam coming back. He feels like that'll only happen if he's there to see it. What's that thing with the tree that falls in the forest and nobody can hear it?

What eventually pushes Dean into leaving is the thought that comes to him, unbidden, the morning of the third day. It's six-thirty. He's slept for maybe two hours since Sam vanished, and he hasn't seen a mirror lately but he's got a thick layer of gingery stubble. His eyes are so raw-tired that he can barely read, has to strain to focus. He's nearly out of coffee, and given that they buy that shit in bulk, that's saying a lot.

He's opening up Sam's mattress with a penknife when he thinks, very clearly, _Sam is dead._ It's not like the idea hadn't been at the back of his mind, but he hadn't let himself think it before. But something's breaking in him- he can feel it, sure as he can feel his tendons push out like birds' feet when he makes a fist, sure as he can feel the danger danger danger call deep in his gut. He lets it break for a second. He lets it. Thinks, Sam's dead. Sam's dead. Sam's dead. Lets himself experience, in miniature, the stark horror of having no options, no recourse, no try again laters, no second chances, no time to fix anything. This is the part of grief that never gets monotonous. With Bobby, it was crinkle eyes and ol' rotgut and dirty hats and that one time he shouted at Dean and called him a princess and everything, every fond and good and grumpy thing about that stubborn old man spilling over him at once. With Sam, as many times as he loses him, it's never the same. The first time- Sam dying in his arms in the mud- it had been the panic of it, the No not here not now not him we were so close, the Baby brother and Should have protected you it should have been me and how dare they leave you to die on your knees in the mud how dare they and it had all happened so fast, the No please let me at least talk to him first, let us at least say our goodbyes, give us something, give us anything, give us time. Now it's How could I let you spend your whole life scared, how could they let us suffer more when we've suffered so much, all those things I said we could do tomorrow and now there's no tomorrows left to do them in, look at how good you were, look at how kind and smart and good you were, look at how much you loved me, look at how much you loved me, look at how much you loved me with all your kindness and goodness and sweetness and darkness and your soft hair and your stupid eyes and the way you touched books like you were running your finger over glass to collect the dust from it and _Sam_.

Well, they got time.

They did at least get that.

Something like this, letting something that huge into you, it fucks with you for days. Dean can't just tell himself Shut the hell up, he's not dead and go about the business of a search-and-rescue. But that's what has to be done; he does it. He does it. He pushes it down. He pushes it all down. Sammy always hated that, of course; thought he was emotionally repressed, thought it wasn't healthy, blah blah blah. Fuck that, though. Of course it's not healthy. Of course he's fucking repressed. But it beats being a crying mess with a sofa cushion over his head. It beats being useless.

Shut the fuck up, he tells himself. He's not dead. (If he's dead, I'll march into Heaven and rip the throats out of every angel in the place if I have to. I'll march into the Empty and drag him out and then I'll stab Billie in the neck. I'll march into Hell. I'll march into Purgatory. I'll march into goddamn TV-land.) He's not dead.

Packing takes twelve minutes. He's on the road within fifteen.

*

Dying October sunlight's made the car seats warm. It reflects off the wing mirrors, gives a Hell-glare to the whites of Dean's eyes when he catches his reflection.

He's got no direction, not really, no leads except five decaying petals. Sam once told him that Lebanon is the historical center of America; it makes sense to drive out from there. He takes back roads; it's a whole lot of fields round here, and all these dusty roads and the sun glancing off the car remind him jarringly of his years alone, after Sam went off to Stanford and Dad handed over the keys to the kingdom. His hands tighten around the wheel. He's almost tempted to say something; to beg the Impala to lead him to Sam.

He pulls off at a motel when it starts getting dark, because he's beginning to feel floaty and detached and weirdly light, and when he tries to leave the car he's grabbing hold of the door to steady himself before he faceplants. It's then that he realises he can't remember the last time he ate.

The motel is the kind of shitty that even they rarely check into; one of the windows is taped up, it appears to be constructed from clapboard, and there's a greenish stain on the ceiling that bulges out behind the head of the desk clerk.

He's not sure whether he wants a single or a double. Turns out they only have doubles anyway.

He pays in cash (it's by the hour, for fuck's sake) and finds the room. The walls in this place are so thin that he can hear a couple mid-gasp in the next room. He dumps the bag on the other bed (Sammy's bed) and begins spray-painting a devil's trap on the ceiling, just to give his hands something to do.

He summons Crowley again- whilst praying to Cas, who cares if he sounds desperate, it's Sam- and neither of them show. What the fuck is up with Heaven and Hell anyway? Historically Cas can be sketchy about coming when they pray, fair enough, but Crowley tends to be pretty quick about it.

His challenge for this night is Not Thinking. He gets out Sam's laptop and searches a bunch of news pages. There's more stuff about disappearances and people being found asleep and he finds a couple articles about the 'miracle trees' that are supposedly sprouting everywhere. It seems unrelated, but there's never two crazy things going on at once. 'Hey, Sam-'

He stops. Looks around. Takes a deep, long, inhale-exhale.

The question is, what the hell does it all mean? What is there to tell him where to go now? What to do now? It's only a matter of time before he gets piss-drunk. So far he's held out, all It'll slow you down with finding him, all He'd be so sad, but, God, Dean needs to be able to not feel for a while. He's spending every second of every minute of every day pushing things back and it's exhausting.

Drinking won't help you find Sam. Everything you do must help you find Sam now.

It feels different this time; different from every other time Sam's been taken. Different from the Benders, different from Abaddon, different from Cold Oak, different from Gadreel, different from Meg, different from the vetala that one time. Different from the Cage. He's not sure why that is. He's just so done with it, so tired of it, and right now if he knew for sure Sam were waiting for him in Heaven he'd blow his brains out with pleasure. Maybe it's just the sheer amount of times this has happened before, the ugly familiarity of that growing sense that something hideous has happened. Maybe it's that he promised Sam never again.

On their last hunt (not their last hunt, their most recent hunt- or, yes, maybe their last hunt, maybe when he gets Sam back they'll retire fully) they'd gone to a motel. It was classier than this one, but it smelt the same. Motels tend to. It's kind of a mixture of nicotine, stale booze, stale sweat, and sex, with overtones of Pine Forest air conditioner.

They've a different set of unspoken politics when they're away from the Bunker. Sam keeps to his own bed, for one thing, though sometimes their hands tangle together in the night. But every so often- not always, but every so often- the darkness opens things up like flowers.

That night on the Most Recent Hunt (only four nights ago, Jesus Christ, only four nights ago Sam was here and solid and I could touch him whenever I wanted and speak to him and why didn't I) they'd been lying in their beds. It was maybe two in the morning. They were both sober.

Dean was beginning to tease himself into sleep when Sam said quietly, 'I used to be so afraid.'

'Hmm?'

'About Hell. I used to be so scared. Of going back.'

Dean's eyes had opened. He looked over to the bed where Sam lay.

'Some nights it was like I could feel it,' said Sam. 'Like there was a- a great hand, y'know- pulling me down into the earth.' He paused. 'It was like. I was out. And, mostly, I knew I was out. But the Cage- that place still existed. Somewhere on some dimension it was still reachable, and as long as it was still reachable, I could go back there. Like, it was possible.'

Dean didn't say anything.

'Sometimes all I could think about was the fact that potentially, one day, I could go back.' His voice was soft in the dark. 'That I could be returned to- to that same state again. And then I went back.'

'Sam,' Dean said.

'Here's the funny thing,' Sam said. 'I think in a way I kind of wanted to. Just to get the worst over with. Just to- confirm my worst fear. And I went back. And it was- well.'

It had started to rain.

'I'm not scared anymore,' Sam said. 'I'm not sure why. But I'm not.'

After a minute, Dean heard him turning over in bed. He closed his eyes. Sleep came with surprising ease.

*

Dean wakes face-down in the motel pillow, fully clothed over the covers. Even his boots are still on. He wonders if his recollection had been a dream or a simple memory. That motel had been marginally classier than this one. He's glad about that.

There's still no sign of Crowley or Cas.

It's two in the morning. He's hungry, he's got no actionable leads, and the couple next door have progressed to screaming at each other. Dean snatches up his car keys and makes for the door.

The sun's coming paper-pink over the horizon when he pulls the Impala into the gas station of the small town where the Most Recent Hunt was, and he's already starting to feel that this is a bad idea, that this is reckless, that this could do something to him in a way that he might not be able to detect. But what the hell- he should check for leads.

He starts with the gas station, asks for guys fitting Sam's description. Nothing. Next, the graveyard where they laid the spirit to rest. It's strange coming back to a town where they just left a mess; he has to glance furtively before going anywhere.

He checks through the graveyard, even digs up the grave they dug to confirm that Sam is not at the bottom of it (growing increasingly convinced, as he digs, that Sam _is_ , and almost collapsing in relief when he cracks open the coffin). When he goes to the motel he asks for the same room as last time, flashes the Fed badge when the kid working the desk proves reluctant.

Luckily they didn't vandalise this room; they don't generally count on being able to come back to a place. Dean can't get over the fact that a few days ago Sam was walking and breathing and taking up space in this room.

He touches the light switches where Sam's fingers have been. It shouldn't feel like such a privilege, this feeling of being close to Sam. It shouldn't feel like a holy grail. That's another familiar hated feeling, and it's beginning to creep up on him.

(Along with the very faintest poisonous sense that he's never going to see Sam again; that he's making the most of what's left of him in this room because this is his last chance to memorise Sam. To be near him.)

It's this point where he decides he can't do this anymore. He just can't. He drives down to the gas station, buys three bottles of whiskey, and starts drinking before he's even back behind the wheel. Fuck Sam. Fuck Sam. Sam's not here. Sam doesn't get a say in how he copes.

Back in the motel he sits on the bed in which Sam told him about his Cage-fears and he drinks. It hits him harder than he expected; it's been a while, maybe even longer than he thought. He's just broken what's probably the biggest streak of no-serious-drinking he's had since being fifteen years old. But, hell, there's no-one else around to care about that. No-one to stay sober for.

So he gets drunk. And he waits for the numbness, for the not-giving-a-shit. Fuck you, Sam, for looking at him like that. He realises he said that aloud and there's something so liberating about it- 'Fuck you, Sam,' he says again. 'Fuck you fuck you fuck you.' Fuck you for caring. Fuck you for leaving. Fuck you for having faith. Fuck you for being so stupid and so trusting that something would obviously come and screw that up because just because, because that's just tempting fate, because faith just _has_ to be tested, because they live in a mad blind howling universe that gets its kicks by hurting people who try to care for it. Fuck you for making me care.

He wakes at dawn to find the room trashed. The lamp's broken. Lampshade crooked. Mattress shredded. His lighters in a scattered heap on the floor. The chair's matchwood. The walls, the bed, some of the ceiling, the bathroom- all splashed with something that looks like water. He sniffs it.

Gasoline, he realises.

His head's pounding like a bitch.

Fuck. What the fuck has he- there's no Sam left here anymore. He's wiped it away. Only Dean, Dean's fury, Dean's ugly raging violent brokenness painted on the walls. He's lost a bit of his brother. These traces are precious. These traces could be all he has. He couldn't hold it together for longer than four days without drinking. If Sam were here. If Sam were here. His eyes would bug out and he'd spread his hands in that pissy what-the-hell-did-you-do-that-for way and say _Seriously, Dean? You do get that we paid a deposit, right?_

He'd give a lot to see that face again now. When things like this happen it's the flaws that he misses the most; the things that he knows could slip from his memory so easily, given time. He's terrified of forgetting the little mole to the side of Sam's nose. The way he screwed his face up when he saw something gross. His rare grins. The sasquatch-sized footprints that inevitably track down the corridor after he showers. Dean's aching like something's been torn out of him. (Something has.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feed me comments, guys <3


	4. Chapter 4

i.

October 10, 00:37

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'Five days, Sam. Five fuckin'- d'you know how worried I'm gettin' here? Where the fuck are you? You were the fuckin' psychic, can't you send me a fuckin'- phrophecy dream or somethin'? I just- how'm I even s'posed to know where to look?' (Pause.) 'I, uh- I keep tryin' to summon Cas or Crowley. Someone. I just don't wanna be alone in this thing, Sammy, but no-one's showin'. Fuck. Gonna regret this tomorrow. Shouldn't be drinkin'. Or calling, I know, I know, but fuck if it isn't good to talk t' you. Even if you're not gonna hear it. I got sad in my old age, huh?' (Pause.) 'Yeah, yeah, save it. I know what you're gonna say. You always were a little shit.' (Pause.) 'Just wish you'd give me somethin' to go on. I'm drivin' down to Jericho tomorrow- y'know where the woman in white case was. I mean. S'stupid, I know, an' sentimental and all, but I gotta start somewhere. I gotta go somewhere.' (Pause. Five seconds.) 'S'gonna hurt, though. Bein' somewhere where we were. Y'know? Back in the bad ol' days. Or the good ol' days. Before all this angel crap. When the fuck'd it all get so _big_ , huh? S'fuckin' lonely's what it is.' (Pause. Nearly a minute, this time.) 'Hey. Sammy- there was always somethin' I wanted to ask you, y'know? Never really dared. Didn't wanna upset you or nothin'.' (Pause.) 'I always wondered. When you got outta Hell. Did everythin' before it seem all- weird? Like it happened to someone else? I forgot some stuff. Mostly from when we were kids. It came back after a while, but everythin' before it felt all- distant, y'know? Guess forty years downstairs does that to you. An' I always wondered if it felt like that for you. A million years away. I guess it prob'ly would, right?' (Pause.) 'We coulda talked about that, Sammy. We coulda. If you'd wanted to. Maybe it'd've made us- feel better. Y'know.'

ii.

October 11, 23:14

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'Sammy.' (A retch; a groan.) 'I'm so fucking-' (Unidentifiable sound.) 'Puking behind a dumpster.' (Laughter.) 'Puking behind a dumpster. At least it's familiar territory, huh? You wanna come and hold my hair back, sweetheart? Would have thought this'd be just your thing.' (More retching.) 'Fucking tequila. Kiddo, when I get you back, your cell's getting incinerated.' (Retching.) 'I'll buy you a new one. Promise.'

iii.

October 12, 03:02

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'Jericho. Fuck, Sammy, I even went on the same fuckin' bridge. How 'bout that for memory lane, huh. Feel kinda like I've messed with the order of the universe or somethin', comin' back here. Guess I just couldn' leave well enough alone.' (Pause.) 'We were so fuckin' young. Y'know? I mean, shit, you were barely old 'nough to drink. I just. I found the same bridge. Where we pretended we were U.S Marshalls that one time. An' it jus' looked the same, all the sunrise light an' everything, an' I just remembered how your fuckin' hair kept flopping into your face that day and how- how _surprising_ it all was, y'know, how I dropped this little scrawny kid off at the bus stop and now, Jesus fuck, you were taller than me. That was what really got me, I think. An' you won't believe this but my first thought after I saw that you had height on me was _how the fuck am I s'posed to keep him safe now?_ I mean, you weren't little enough to jus' shove behind me anymore, right?' (Pause. The sound of someone drinking; a throat moving.) 'An' then we got on the road. An' I got that way down, y'know, where it counted, nothin' was different. An' that's what had to give in the end, I reckon- with, y'know, Gadreel an' all that. We had to change.' (More drinking.) 'We had to change.' (Pause.) 'Sorry, Sammy. Too drunk.' (Pause.) 'Way too goddamn drunk.'

(There is silence, and the faint hitch of someone breathing. After a few minutes the breathing deepens. A _thunk_ is heard. The last five minutes of the message are deep, congested snores.)

iv.

October 15, 00:39

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'Y'know why I'm callin' on your spare spare cell, Sammy? I didn't wanna hear your voice. On the voicemail thingy on the main ones. Didn't think I could- y'know. Stand it. Or maybe I'm savin' it for when I miss you bad enough. Don't wanna listen to it too often, y'know? It's like old pictures. If you look at 'em too much you go numb. Or, hell, maybe I just don't wanna-' (Pause. Perhaps two minutes.) 'I went to a bar last night. Mostly just to get shitfaced. Keep driving around, picking up our old trails. Asking to see if you've been seen. I mean, you kinda stick out, kid. Keep trying to get a hold of Cas or Crowley or, heck, any garden-variety demon at the moment. No luck so far. S'weird. Heard that there's been no detectable demon activity for days, actually, and that sounds awesome on paper, but I don't like it, Sam. I don't like it.' (Pause.) 'Anyway. I was in this bar and I turned round and for this one moment I thought I saw you. This big lanky dude with hair just like yours, all leaning on the bar with his legs tangled up in the stool. Got this jolt. Went all- weird.' (A shaky laugh.) 'I'm tellin' you, man, it felt like when you touch an electric fence by accident. For this one second I thought- yeah.' (Pause.) 'But then he turned around. And, I mean, his nose wasn't right and his eyes weren't right and he just- well, buddy, let's just say that you're inimitable, huh? But he was- not close. But he was _something_. And that- maybe it was the way he was sitting- I started missing the other stuff. The shit we never talked about. I even sorta miss never talking about it. All the crap we did in the dark. I miss your skin. Your stupid little moles.' (Seconds tick by; one, two, three...) 'I'd know your hands anywhere just by how the calluses feel, I reckon.' (Pause.) 'How's that for romance, kiddo?' (Pause.) 'I hit on him. The guy. If you were wondering. He was pretty nice about it, but he said he was straight. Ended up hustling him for a hundred cash. I'm pretty sure I coulda got four times that out of him, but I felt kinda guilty, y'know? Like it was you I was cheating.' (Pause.) 'You know, I hardly even thought about the whole- the sex part. About missing you like that. I'd barely even thought about it until then.' (Pause.) 'You can do whatever you like, Sam. Just. Please. We can break the- y'know- the other stuff off. I don't care. I mean, I care, but if you- if it's what you want. Just please come back. I don't care how. Shitting- I'm so fucking stupid. S'not your fault, Sam. I'm talking to a phone that I know is in your room. Maybe that's a good thing. S'not your fault.'

v.

October 17, 02:00

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'Fuck you. Fuck you, Sam. Fuck you for this. I fucking- I fucking hate you. You fucking freak. You monster. There, are you happy? Is that what you want? For me to _just say it_? To _get it out there?_ I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I don't know why I wasted a goddamn minute of my life on you. This isn't fair. You can't do this to me. You just- you just can't. Get the-'

vi.

October 17, 09:33

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'Sammy. Oh, God. Oh, God. I'm- I'm so sorry. Fuck.' (Pause.) 'I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, kiddo. I didn't- I didn't mean a damn word. Shit. Fuck. You're not a freak and you're not a monster, okay, and I don't believe that you're gone because you wanted to go and even if you are I'm gonna try and respect that. And- shit. I'm so sorry, Sam. I don't hate you. I hate this. I hate this fucking life. I hate being scared all the time. I hate not knowing what's happening to you right now. I hate that you could be somewhere being hurt and I'm here leaving you fucking voicemail. I hate that we're not even safe in the safest place on Earth. You're my bright spot, Sam. I- I hope you get that.' (Pause.) I hope wherever you are you know that.' (Muffled.) 'Cas, where the fuck are you?'

vii.

October 20, 00:45

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'Gonna get you out, Sam. Don't care where you are. You're comin' home. I'm bringin' you home.' (Pause.)

viii.

October 22, 01:23

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'Please. Please. I-' (Pause. An odd, guttural, wounded noise.) 'I didn't think- I never thought-'

ix.

October 31, o3:08

(Sam cannot take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.)

'S' been three weeks, Sam. Three fucking weeks. I can't- I can't even imagine what you might be going through. If you're not dead already.' (Pause.) 'I mean, you wouldn't just leave, righ'? I know you wouldn't. Not without telling me. Not without saying goodbye. Not without taking your stuff. We were startin' to be happy, huh? We were jus' startin' to be happy.' (Pause.) 'Please come home, Sammy. Thought I could rescue you. Thought I could- fuck, look at me. Drunk behind a bar in Blue Earth. Not savin' anyone, Sammy, not right now. God. M' so sorry. M' so sorry, Sam. I just- I need a miracle, kiddo. I need you to come back 'cause I can't find you. Miss you so much. 'M so scared that this is it. This could be it, Sam, are you listenin'? This could be it. The last time we saw each other could be the journey back from that ghost hunt, you walkin' into the Bunker. I was wonderin' why you didn't come to bed. I shoulda known. I shoulda known. I shoulda known. I shoulda done somethin'. I should at least have got a proper look at you. Or somethin'. Fuck. If I'd'a just told you to come to bed with me maybe you wouldn' have been-' (Pause.) 'We could have been asleep in my room righ' now. If I'd jus' asked.' (Pause.) M' so tired, Sam. I just- I need you to find me. If anyone can do it-' (Pause.) 'Please, Sam. Please. Please.'

x.

On November 3, 01:02, Dean tries to leave a message and finds that Sam's voicemail is full.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are love. <3


	5. Chapter 5

For weeks, all Garth's phones have been going straight to voicemail. Dean's known at the back of his mind that he's got to check this out, because Garth's phones never go to voicemail, but he's been putting it off. But, heck, he can't ignore this. Not when he's getting nowhere in looking for Sam.

So he drives down to Grantsburg. He's given up trying to catch a demon; the only report of a possession that he caught wind of turned out to be a nutcase family who called in a priest because their kid came out of the closet. (He'd given the priest some friendly advice; the kid, cash for a bus ticket.) Cas and Crowley haven't showed. In a moment of desperation he rings Rowena but her phone, too, goes to voicemail.

It's starting to get eerie. He knows he's out of the loop, but there shouldn't be complete radio silence like this. There's always something happening with Hell; deals closing, palms greasing, possessions that culminate in broken teeth and flying spittle. They used to run into demons everywhere. Now he can't find one no matter how hard he tries.

It's occured to him that there's a link between Sam vanishing and all this. It's one of the reasons he heads down to Wisconsin on November the fourth.

Grantsburg is small; not Lebanon-small, but just peaceful enough to tip over into boring. Dean can't say he's ever heard of a hunter leaving the life to settle down in a city. It'd only be going from one violence to another. It's all very well to go round saving people, but no-one wants to live beside the masses of their rescued. If you can't hold the idea of innocent people cleanly in your mind- maybe helped along with one or two grateful case studies- hunting seems pointless. When you live in a city it's face to face, every day, with how plain _ugly_ people can get.

Garth's street is quiet. Tell-tale-quiet. There's too many drawn curtains. Dean had tried not to get his hopes up about this, about how if he found Garth that would at least be someone, because it really would just be typical for Garth to disappear at a time like this.

He wonders, hand on the knocker, what he'll do if Garth's vanished in the same way as Sam. He knocks. He waits.

Two minutes and twelve seconds later, he kicks the door in.

The smell is always the first thing. Something stinks like rotting meat. Fuck. Fuck. He rounds the corner into the dining room, gun in hand. Stops.

At first he thinks they're dead. Garth and four other people, presumably werewolves. They're sitting at the table, heads hanging forward. Dean's so used to connecting dead stenches with human bodies that it takes him a moment to really see the plates in front of the weres, each with a large, purple-brown-red heart congealing on it. There's a bluebottle crouching on one of the plates.

All he has to do is lean closer to confirm that the smell is coming from the hearts, rather than the people, who seem completely out of it. He reaches to slap Garth- and stops. There's something funny about their stillness. They're like broken-necked mannequins. (That's not funny at all.)

He hesitates before whacking Garth cleanly across the face. A hunter should be reaching for a gun before Dean's hand even finished connecting; Garth doesn't stir. Dean sees the fine layer of dust that tinges the wolves' hair. The oldest guy- some poor fucker wearing a crucifix- has an earwig crawling up his neck. Dean doesn't move it. It's not like it's doing any harm, after all.

He tries slapping. Shaking. Fuck, he tries _tickling_. He tries holding their eyelids open and shining flashlights in. They're unresponsive. He stands in the room and realises his hands are trembling. It takes ages to stab the right buttons to call an ambulance. He feels impotent.

He checks under the table- not knowing what he's looking for- and sees tattered bits of pink-brown petals, all scattered round their feet. Decaying. He frowns. A calling-card, as if he needed one.

When the ambulance is on its way, Dean goes out onto the porch so he doesn't have to look anymore.

He'd felt better on the way here. Weeks of trying to find somewhere to look, something to do, even if it was just so that he could tell himself he'd done something to try to help. Feeling the futility of it, getting drunk to forget that while he was getting drunk anything could be happening to Sam. That had always been the hardest part of staying with Lisa; how to live that life and not spend every day thinking I'm making burgers/reading books/jacking off/driving to work while he suffers, and I'm doing nothing to stop it. I'm not even trying _._ He needs to try this time. To try he needs a direction. He's beginning to get why Sam didn't look for him the year he was in Purgatory. Sometimes Dean feels like he's splintering apart under all the directions he could choose. Under not knowing whether he's picked the right one.

This, of course, is where whiskey comes in handy.

*

At the hospital, Dean pulls fakey-fakey FBI rank on a doctor and demands to know what's up. The doctor- thin wrists, exhausted eyes, shock of greying hair- gives him an odd look, but concedes.

'They're comatose,' he says. Rubs a hand over his face. 'All of them. Despite being healthy adults with nothing apparently wrong. And by that, I mean nothing. As in, none of them were dehydrated or starved- despite being unconscious for several days.'

'And that isn't weird to you?' says Dean. The guy seems too complacent for his taste.

'Well, yes, it's weird,' the doctor says. 'But it's not a first. We had a similar case a few weeks back, only weirder.'

'Weirder how?' (He should have known. This shit can always get weirder.)

'Weird like an entire convent found in a similar state. In the middle of mass, apparently. Nothing wrong with any of them- or nothing that would have led to something like this.' The doctor takes his glasses off; cleans them on his gown. 'I'm suprised the Feds are getting involved.' He raises an eyebrow. 'You reckon it's aliens?'

'No,' says Dean. He's making notes.

'Good,' says the doctor. 'I- I'm stumped, if I'm honest.' He scrubs a hand over his eyes again. 'You know how your whole life, your training, everything, they tell you you've got to be prepared for anything. They say that's what you're here for.' He looks at Dean. 'And I thought, yeah, I can deal with whatever's thrown at me. It'll be a challenge. But I don't mind telling you that this case is starting to scare me.'

'I don't blame you,' Dean says, gently as he can.

'Yeah.' The doctor glances down a corridor. 'Look- I should get back. We're calling in the CDC tomorrow. I don't care what the locals think. Nobody here's equipped to to handle phenomena.'

*

He holes up in a motel that night, and refrains from getting drunk just long enough to decide that yes, there is definitely Something Happening, and that Sam's disappearance is more than likely connected, because things like this always are. And this means that the increased missing persons stats might fit in here somewhere. It's something, at least.

What he needs now is someone like Ash. Or Bobby. Or Dad. Or Charlie. Or Garth. Or Kevin. Or, well. Sam. (Too bad they're all dead.) (They're not all dead. Even if he doesn't- admit it, you don't- know about Sam, Garth's not dead.) Someone who can track patterns. He's got out a map and stuck it with pins to indicate the senseless disappearences, the cases of comatose people or families, but they don't seem to be gathered round a central point or anything. Or maybe this is a sign that their (his) hunts have been too easy lately. He folds up the map.

In the bathroom, he splashes water on his face. Tells himself, as he's been telling himself in his rare moments of sobriety, to be rational. To look at this reasonably. Sam may be dead. He also may not be. The fact that he has a potential lead is Good News. However, Good News doesn't change that Sam may be dead. He remembers a hospital room and a beeping monitor and Sam's eyelids raw pink and a woman telling him It's time to prepare yourself. It's time to prepare himself. To face facts. (If there's one thing the past years have taught him, it's that there are no facts. They make the facts.)

He looks around the motel room. One bed messy. One toothbrush on the sink. One pair of jeans like a carcass on the floor. It's all wrong. He loves Sam like a gaping wound. Suddenly he knows he's not going back to the bunker alone, and it hits him then- this could be his life for the next thirty, forty, fifty years. Until he dies. The silence and the one toothbrush. If he finds Sam dead, then that's game over; he can blow his brains out in a motel bathtub with total integrity. But if he doesn't find Sam at all- if he doesn't know- then he won't be able to stop looking. He just won't. And it won't be healthy or cathartic or healing or keep him from coming apart at the seams. But he'd rather be mangled and clawed apart for Sam than healthily mourning for him and Sam, if he were here, would be all, Dean, you've got a right to let yourself grieve and eventually heal and settle down and get a girl and a pale blue fence and a house with two bedrooms and psychobabble ad infinitum but fuck you, Sam, he's also got a right to be fucked up over this. He's got a right to break his heart over this. He's got a right to break his goddamned heart.

Looking in the mirror properly, he finds he looks like shit. A scruffy beard masks half his face. The skin under his eyes is yellowed like old paper, tight over his cheekbones, and the lines round his mouth seem to have deepened. He looks about as tired as he is. And maybe it's just the light but he looks flat, somehow, two-dimensional. As if Sam disappearing removed a layer of Dean. Makes sense, really. It's pretty sad, but it makes sense.

He leaves the bathroom; sits heavily on his bed, knee cracking. Battles with himself for almost a second. Reaches for the whiskey.

*

Dean reads the address one more time; he's written it in block capitals on his hand. His memory's shot to shit lately. He's also not entirely sure what state he's in, or how long he's been driving, but he suspects those are thanks to warding spells. Which would indicate that he's close.

When was the last time he saw another car? Not for a while, at least. Trees crowd in on either side of the road. The sky's dream-blue and faraway. Dean's got the windows down, it's a warm day, but there's no breeze. Nothing to disturb the trees.

He doesn't know the date. When he checks his watch, he finds that it's stopped on 12:17. Which would make sense, because it's old and shitty, except that when he checks his phone he finds that it, too, has stopped on 12:17. He touches the lump of his gun in his pocket for the thousanth time.

After who-knows-how-long, the trees peter out and fields begin. Trying to get a look at the what's in them, he frowns. Pulls the car over. Gets out.

The fields are full of wildflowers. Or were. They're all dead. Stretching off into the distance, until the fields are hemmed in by trees, they're all dead.

Out of sight, a bird calls. The wind begins to blow. He watches as petals break loose, spilling over the field towards him, like rain on a see-saw. They blow over the path. One clings to his bootlace. He turns his head to see where the road bends behind more trees.

Ten minutes, half an hour, three hours (a day, two days, two weeks) later, he's in the Impala, following the bend in the road. More fields; more dead flowers. In the distance there's a house just off the road. It's not really what he expected. Small, wooden, a little rickety-looking, painted ice-cream yellow. Slowly, very slowly, he becomes aware of a low noise. Like someone humming in the next room. There's something familiar about it, and he realises that Cas, in his prime, was once surrounded by a similar noise. Only Cas's had been a dry crackle like TV static before a thunderstorm, or an old newspaper burning. This is making Dean prickle. His palms sweat.

He'd found the address on a bit of paper safety-pinned in Dad's journal. Lenuţa, it read, and something about her being a powerful witch. There was also something about 'approach with extreme caution', but honestly, Dean had just been glad to find a possible major player who might not be out of action. Rowena, Cas, Crowley, angels, demons, they all seem to have dropped off the map. He tried finding Missouri and was told that she moved from Lawrence years ago. He's too scared to call Jody in case nobody picks up.

So yes, he's aware that this is dumb, and reckless, and will probably lead him nowhere. But he needs advice, if nothing else. He needs to talk to someone who knows what the fuck is going on. He doesn't even really care if her house has bodily fluids all over the place, in classic witchy style. He just needs to talk.

He pulls up. Gets out, hand on gun.

The house looks completely innocuous. He doesn't wonder if he's got the wrong place; if she's moved or something. Dad doesn't make mistakes, even when he's dead. And witches don't just move. And 'innocuous' is suspicious anyway. It's suspicious as hell. Especially when 'innocuous' stops clocks and hides in fields of dead flowers. Then it's _more_ suspicious than Hell.

He hesitates before knocking on the door. But only because he's wondering whether to break it down.

After a minute he hears footsteps; the rattle of a chain being drawn back. Then the door's wrenched wide open.

He's not sure what he was expecting. Not this, though. A young woman- hard to tell how young, twenty, thirty. The kind of tall where her bones seem to push through her skin, wearing a robe open over her bra; he tries to keep his eyes on her face. Her eyebrows are thick and dark and almost meet in the middle, and she's got all this wild black hair that she could probably sit on. There's something ratlike about her , but she's not unattractive. There's a large mole near her jaw. She's scowling.

Dean blinks.

She casts an eye over him. 'Who the fuck are you? Horus? You are late.' Her accent's East European and it takes him by surprise.

'Uh,' he says. 'I don't think so.'

She stares at him for a second. 'Fucking birds,' she says. 'Then what are you here for? You are American. Yes?'

'Yeah. And you're- Lenuţa.' He drags his eyes away from the thin trail of black hair that leads down her stomach. 'I just. I need to talk to you.'

'Why is that?'

'Uh, well-' He swallows. He can hear the humming more clearly. Feel it, too. Like a throb in the air. Lenuţa has very pale eyes. 'I need help. But it's more than that. I mean- my little brother's vanished. But also there's these other disappearances and- I mean, the people falling asleep and the dead flowers and I'm getting kinda overwhelmed. And my Dad kind of- told me about you.'

Her eyes are still on him. 'Give me your name.'

'Winchester. I'm Dean Winchester. You, uh-'

'Winchester.' She appears to think. 'Your father is John?'

'Yeah. You knew him?'

'Yes,' she says. Her scowl deepens. 'I disliked him very much.'

Dean waits. She surveys him. 'You do not look like him. Is the same with your brother?'

'Well- I think so,' he says. 'I mean. Sammy's got the coloring, but he's different in everything else.' He wants to tag on a _so will you talk to me_ ; doesn't quite dare.

'I understand,' Lenuţa says. Her eyes narrow. 'If you are here to discuss what is happening then you may come in. Also? You look like fucking shit. But I would like you to know that your gun will not be useful to you. Put that fucking thing away.'

*

Inside her house, there's nothing suspicious on the walls that he can see. Lenuţa shows him to a small kitchen- cheap furniture, a stained stove, a rust-flecked washer- and sits him in a chair with a squashy fake-leather seat. Then she makes tea.

'You say you are living in Kansas,' she says, stirring the pot. 'Lebanon is good place. Is center of America.'

He shifts. The seat squeaks. 'I... think Sam might have said something.'

'Is very lonely place. Small. Out in nowhere. Do you not wish to live in a city?'

'No,' says Dean. 'No way.'

'That is smart.' She spoons in sugar without asking him. 'I used to spend time down there. Lots of time. But people are shitty now. Is the internet. Is letting all of them be cowards. You know?' She brings the tray- it has a picture of a puppy on it- over and sits across from Dean. She pours the tea into two cups. Pushes one towards him. He takes a sip. It tastes kind of funny- it's been years since he drank tea- but he suspects it's one of those weird fruit kinds that Sam likes from time to time. Anyway, Lenuţa doesn't come across as the poisoning type.

'Yeah,' he says. 'Yeah, I usually let Sam handle the internet stuff. If I do it I just end up reading the comments on YouTube videos.'

She smiles a little.

He takes another sip of his tea. It's starting to grow on him. 'So the dead flowers. Do you know anything about that?'

'Very little,' she says. She tucks a lock behind her ear. 'I am not informed so much these days. My own flowers-' she nods to the fields beyond the window- 'died only days ago. I hear of people who fall to sleep and do not wake. Is that correct?'

'Yeah,' he says. 'Well, some of them just disappear. Like. Well. Sam.'

She seems to look beyond him for a moment.

'What is happening is strange,' she said. 'Peculiar. So many miracles- almost as if something is waking up- or perhaps the opposite.'

Her eyes flick back to Dean.

'Sam Winchester,' she says. 'You conquered your devil together?'

'Ye- well, Sam, really. I mean, me too, I guess. But yes. That was a while back.'

'I met him once, you know. Lucifer. I did not like him.' Lenuţa sips her tea. 'He was a bastard. Big, big ego. A brat.'

'Sounds like him.'

She looks at Dean intently and says, 'Tell me of your brother.'

He balks. 'What? No. Why?'

'Because you shall get nothing out of me if you do not tell me. I wish to know what I deal with.'

Which is reasonable enough. He supposes. But still. 'Look, lady, I don't know shit about you,' he says. 'You could be any kind of psycho. I've never even heard of you before, and trust me, that's not something that happens a lot. So how about you give me an overview, huh, and _then_ I tell you about Sam.'

Lenuţa only rolls her eyes. 'Enough macho bullshit. You seem to forget that you come to me for help. I do not care whether you trust me. I also do not care for you or your brother. Grow some balls or leave, Mr Winchester. I assure you that I will manage without you.' She sips away.

Dean's knuckles are white round his teacup- too often that sort of speech has culminated in violence- but Lenuţa seems unruffled. He watches her carefully.

'What about him would you want to know?' he says. 'It's just, well.' He's ashamed when his voice cracks. 'It's not exactly an easy subject for me right now, y'know?'

Lenuţa sets her teacup down with a _clink_ and looks him squarely in the eye. 'You want help? Sure. I tell you I do not give a damn about you and your brother. So make me give a damn. Then I will help you, maybe. Until then, no.'

'But-' he stops. Forces his voice to something less gratingly soft. 'I- I don't know what to tell you. Can you.' Fuck. 'Can you give me some hints or something? Just. Something to work with here? I mean- I don't do this very often. And it's-' Cutting himself off. Any farther and he's going to slit open his underbelly in front of this woman. Spill his guts. And that would be _stupid_. 'Just help me out a little,' he says, and almost doesn't care that he's begging.

'How should I fucking know?' Lenuţa leans back and stretches, eyes closing, arms arching and coiling over her head, robe falling down one skinny shoulder. A wisp of black hair curls from under her arm. She settles back into her seat. 'His good parts. His bad parts. That which you love about him. Is not a test. The length of his dick. The color of his eyes. Anything.'

He laughs a little. Fuck. When did he last laugh? (And he can't help liking her, just a little, for saying _love_ ; present tense.) He tries to swallow, but his throat feels strange. Thick. 'I.' He swallows again. 'Well, with Sam, he's-' He stops. 'Sorry.'

Lenuţa is just watching him. 'Is not to worry,' she says after a moment.

'No. No.' He clears his throat. 'What you have to understand about Sam is, he's got his faith.'

'Please continue,' says Lenuţa when he pauses again.

'He's got his faith,' says Dean. 'A-and I don't just mean in God, though believe me, that's definitely a factor.' A pause. Shit. What next? 'I mean that he's faithful in the way that only people who've been through the fucking meat grinder can be. I. I mean that he'd forgive you at the drop of a hat if he believed you. You know? I mean that if he trusts you he'll follow you off the edge of the fucking earth. And that- well, that's terrifying, you know? Because actually getting him to trust you-' He laughs again; it sounds shaky. 'That's a whole different bag. You should have seen him when he was a kid. He questioned everything, and I mean _everything_. So when you've earned that trust- well, you gotta watch what you're doing with it.'

Lenuţa nods. Sips her tea.

'He's a good man,' says Dean. 'He's a good man and when I get him back I'm gonna tell him that once an evening every day for the rest of our lives. He's kind. The shit he does for people- I mean, you can get through the big stuff like saving the world, but that means jack squat if you don't give some homeless guy your last dollar every so often, right? And he's a fucking geek. When he's in our library it's like watching one of those hoarders documentaries. He's got this birthmark on the back of his shoulder. He's so tall but he tries to make himself smaller and funny thing is, it works. And I'm not kidding when I say his eyes could end the world.'

'He sounds not as formidible as I have heard,' said Lenuţa, offhand. 'You are also not very scary.'

Dean blinks. 'Well, no. I mean, he's a badass, too. And, uh. We're scarier together, I guess.' And when we're not alone.

'Is not a complaint,' said Lenuţa. And then, 'Fine; okay. I will help if you like.'

'What?' He's jolted the teacup in its saucer; it's rattling dangerously. He stills it. 'You'll help me? Why?'

She picks at a loose thread on her dressing-gown. 'Is a matter of care. I know of you two. I am grateful for what you have done. You love your brother dearly; I would not like to lose someone whom I loved in that way. So, I help.'

Dean knows he should probably be thanking her or something, but all he can say is 'But you're a witch.'

'Yes,' she said. She pours herself another cup of tea. 'I am. Please do not tar all witches with the same brush. Is not polite.'

'Right. No tarring.'

Lenuţa stands. Pulls her robe around her and leads him into another room, with a rickety dresser and a bunch of closed crates. She opens the top drawer; takes out a jar filled with thick dark blood, coagulated in a haze round the top.

'Gross,' says Dean. He looks around. 'Wait. Is this your witchy room or something? Shouldn't it have a few more occult symbols scrawled in charcoal on the floor? A couple dead hares hanging from the ceiling?'

Her back's turned, but she shrugs one shoulder. 'I don't like mess.'

'Your _house_ is a mess.'

'Not that sort of mess. Body and blood and bone mess. It smells horrible and takes a very very long time to clean up. Not all witches-'

'Yeah, yeah, I know. No tarring.'

She pulls out a drawer and carries it through to set it on the kitchen table. Dean peers in. It's mostly jars covered in brown paper. Lenuţa shakes some kind of herb into a mixing bowl and opens one of the jars, adding a spoonful of blood.

'Should I even ask,' says Dean.

'The blood is human,' she says. 'Menstrual. Do not worry. It is harmless.'

She adds more ingredients; powders, fluids, a dash of vinegar.

'What's this for?' he asks.

'Sight,' she says. She turns to him and dips a finger in the mixture, pressing it to his forehead before he can back away. The liquid's strangely warm and he tries not to move. Her fingertip moves in a circle. Stepping back, she smiles. 'There,' she says. 'You can see now. I doubt that you will be able to see your brother, but we are bound to try, no? Think of it as a precautionary measure.'

He tries to listen to her but there's something strange about her face. Like it blurs when she moves. Something pulses under her skin. Then her words catch up. 'What? I might be able to see Sam?'

'Is unlikely. But it is possible that he is simply hidden from your sight. Do you see him now?'

'No.'

'Then I expect you have your answer. However, do not touch your forehead. There is after all always a chance.'

Something occurs to Dean. 'Thank you,' he says.

'It is no matter. But you are welcome. You have more manners than your father.'

Part of him wants to ask about Dad. What he said, what he did, when he came here, what he looked like, why she dislikes him. He doesn't.

'Tell me about how your brother Sam vanished,' says Lenuţa, rinsing out the bowl. 'Anything you know.'

'It's not much.'

'Still.'

He tells her as she dries the bowl and puts it away in a cupboard.

'Pft,' she says when he's done. 'Very strange. In which fashion do you suggest I help you?'

'I thought maybe you could try and scry on him.'

'Well, okay. That is easy enough.'

Lenuţa fills another bowl with water and sits it on the table.

'What sort of thing do you think we're looking at here?' Dean says.

'It could be several things. If your brother remains on the physical plane and there are no wardings surrounding him, we will be able to see him. If he is no longer on this plane, or if he is warded, we will not. Either our attempt works or it does not; either way, we will know more of our situation.'

Dean's fingers tap against the table. 'And the worst case scenario?'

'That the scrying does not work.'

'Which would mean that Sam could be dead.'

'It could. But that is not all it could mean. Scrying is not strong magic; it can be deflected-'

'Okay, okay, can we get on with it.'

Lenuţa shrugs and begins drawing symbols around the bowl. The table's grained with chalk dust from years of spellwork.

When she's done, she says something under her breath- Dean can't make out the words- and after a long moment (during which Dean's heart catches on a single beat and slows until its terminal terrible pendulum drags through mud to reach the other side) the water begins to churn. Dean can hardly breathe. He leans forward. There seems to be a strange light coming from the water, reflected in Lenuţa's eyes. She leans forward, over the bowl. Rests her head on the table. Dean wonders if she's trying to listen. Her eyes are closed.

After a minue, the water slows and stops churning. Dean frowns. He's seen scrying before; the image is meant to show in the water. This water is still and when he leans over it reflects only his face. 'Lenuţa,' he says. 'I- something's wrong.' I don't think it worked.

Lenuţa remains in her position, as if listening, and Dean sits- not daring to disturb her and maybe interrupt something pivotal. He stares at the surface of the water. Right now he wants to see Sam so badly. Prepare yourself. Prepare yourself for lost limbs, for stitches and bruises, for trauma, but at this moment he'd take anything. Anything. He just needs to see Sam again. He just needs to know. But nothing's happening.

'Lenuţa,' he says.

She doesn't move. Her lashes lie heavy on her cheeks. He gazes at the few black hairs above her upper lip. 'Lenuţa,' he says again.

He shakes her. She doesn't say anything. 'Lenuţa. Hey. Wake up.' There's knowledge creeping in on him. He can feel it.

However many times he slaps, shakes or shouts at Lenuţa, she doesn't stir.

After nearly an hour Dean takes the cowards' way out; he leaves her at her table and goes to the Impala. He is very steady. He knew, he feels, that he wouldn't get to see Sam today. That would have been too obvious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are love. <3


	6. Chapter 6

It's taken him a week of dazed wandering to work himself up to this. He hadn't even spent the whole week drunk, though he hadn't exactly spent it sober either.

His disappointment over not seeing Sam is of the sort that he can feel, quite physically. Whenever he thinks of it it feels like someone's got their hands all up in his insides and are rooting around, getting everything in the wrong places. He's okay, though. He's okay. He's lost his greatest asset, which he had for about fifteen minutes, but it's okay. He'll manage.

He's not sure what's pulling him to Kermit, Texas- where he is assured that Sam's old flame Amelia still lives. He doesn't think Sam's gone back to her or anything like that. Sam is many things but he isn't sordid. And anyway he seems to remember something about her being married. Maybe more than anything it's a need to feel close to Sam. To know the part of Sam that he kept for her that year post-Purgatory, the part that Dean still can't claim to understand. The truth is that with every day the Samness fades from his world and less and less things remind him painfully of the sad smiley lightsliver in Sam's eyes and that is, quite patently, Not Okay.

Maybe he just needs to talk to someone about him.

It's seven P.M when he pulls up outside the little house in Texas and he hesitates for a long moment before knocking. He's never met her before, though he's seen a couple photos. And he can't help hoping, just the tiniest bit, that it'll be Sam who answers the door.

He knocks. By the time it's opened he's so nervous he can barely breathe through it.

'Amelia Richardson?' he says.

*

'Do you take sugar in your coffee?' she asks.

'No, thanks.'

'Right. Okay.'

She's prettier than he expected. Curly hair, lonely eyes. He can see how that might appeal to Sam. (He always did love strays.)

'So you're Dean,' Amelia says, handing him a coffee. 'You do realise me and Sam broke it off, right? This isn't some seriously belated version of a hurt-him-and-I'll-kill-you speech?'

'No. I promise it's not that.' He hadn't realised how cold his hands were until he'd fastened them round the mug. 'I'm not here to cause trouble. Not with you or your husband or anyone. Just to talk.'

'No husband.'

'Sorry?'

'No husband. We split. Finally got a divorce last year.' Perhaps she thinks she looks unconcerned. The arch of her shoulders suggests otherwise.

'I'm sorry,' says Dean. 'That sucks.'

'Yeah, well, it's okay.' She takes a long drink. 'I think about him a lot, you know. Sam. You said that something's wrong. What's the matter?'

'He's- disappeared,' says Dean carefully. 'And I'm kind of looking for him. And I just. Wanted to talk.'

Her eyebrows raise. 'Disappeared?'

After Dean spends a good ten minutes convincing her that no, the police should not be called, she settles back into her chair.

'I get it, I guess,' she says. 'There's so many weird things happening. All the disappearances. I suppose the police have their work cut out. So I guess it makes sense that you want to do the job yourself.'

'Yeah. Exactly.'

She surveys him. 'You know, you aren't like I expected.'

He frowns. Cocks his head. 'What did you expect?'

'I- I don't know.' She pauses. 'I guess I expected you to be taller.'

'Oh,' he says. Wonders whether he dares risk a dick joke. But she looks a little embarassed already; he clears his throat, moves on.

'I just wondered,' he said. 'What was Sam like in the year he was with you?'

Her eyes narrow. 'What do you mean exactly?'

'Anything. Throw it at me.'

She spends a few moments staring into her mug. She takes so long that Dean starts wondering whether she's going to say anything at all. But eventually she speaks. 'Did you ever hear the story of that dog whose master died?'

Oh, this can't be good.

'And after that,' she says, 'the dog just waited and waited for him every day for thirty years?' She looks up at Dean. 'Sam was like that. I think he just put his whole life on hold. I always felt that he was waiting and didn't even know it.' A hesitation. 'If I'm honest with myself, I don't think we would have lasted. But there you go.' She drinks. 'He was- odd. I always kinda wondered if he- went through something at some point.'

Lady, he went through everything, Dean nearly says.

'In a way,' she goes on, 'he was the most peaceful person I've ever met. He was- very gentle. He never fought; we didn't argue. But there was always something. I knew there were things he wasn't telling me- things he would never tell me- and I was okay with that. I was. Maybe I was scared to know more about what had made him- that way.'

He waits.

'He was overwhelmed,' she said. 'I only realised how much after he left. But he was so overwhelmed. He had so much weight to carry that sometimes when I looked at him all I could see there was this awful, endless, hopeless tragedy. This- this rat race. This trappedness. And. I just wanted to- make him stop looking like that.' Pause. 'And- he got stir-crazy, you know? He ran, every morning and most nights, too, for hours. He liked rain the most even when he got back in soaked. Never caught a cold from it. I-' she stops. 'I don't know if I should tell you this.'

Dean's fingers against the mug. 'If it helps,' he says gently, 'I'm aware that Sam had issues. Lots of issues. Hell, I've been dealing with them for the past decade or so.' The past all our lives. And I'd deal with it all again. And I want nothing more than to deal with it all again.

Her eyes shine like eggs. 'He ran- to get everything that was in him out. I know because I know what you do when you're like that. You run. And then one day, well- there comes a point where running's not enough. Whatever dream you've built up for yourself isn't enough- and you need the real thing. This one time he went off in the morning and he stayed gone for hours. It started raining. I- I got worried. So I took my car and went to look for him. And you know what I found?'

Dean shakes his head.

'I found him soaked and kind of- staggering along the path. Trying to run. And he just- he wouldn't stop. I slowed to talk to him and it was like he didn't hear me. He just wouldn't stop. Not until I got out and actually grabbed him and then he- he collapsed. There in the mud. And he wasn't even crying. He was just-' she swipes hair from her face. 'He was just- he seemed so confused. He told me he hadn't been in service and he looked _completely_ sincere when he said it. But I know what PTSD looks like. I'm not an idiot. You know I was working up to asking him to go see someone? Get some real help?' She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Dean hadn't realised she was crying. 'And then- Don.'

'Sam told me what happened,' he says. 'I'm real sorry you had to go through that.' She looks at him. 'Really.'

She takes another drink; Dutch courage, he thinks. 'You know when someone's gone? And you take every good thing they ever did and you build this- this sick shrine of them out of it all? Me and Don spoiled each other for ourselves. We forgot about the- little, stupid stuff.' She drinks again. 'And now I can't stop remembering your brother. Your- Sam. And I know this is probably just my distorted memory or something but I never saw Sam being petty. Or small-minded.' Gulp. Gulp. 'He was in love with the big picture. It was almost like a religious thing. It was why we never argued.'

No. Dean's stomach clenches. His throat aches and aches. No, he saved the little stuff for Dean. He let me see his workings. He let me see his pettinesses. He let me see everything. And to think I thought he couldn't help it. Of course he could help it. He let me see it anyway. (Sam; Sammy; Sam; you beautiful thing, you, you beautiful relentless thing.)

'Are you okay?' Amelia, glass slack in her hand, looking at him worriedly.

'Yeah,' he says. (But why? Why not let go? Why not crack? Why not-? When did this turn into a requiem? He doesn't know. And there was so much left to learn. Why has this been done to us? I will never not hurt at the smell of your hair.)

'You're crying,' she says, softly, as if wondering.

It's half-past-four in the morning when he leaves. Amelia leans against the doorframe to watch him go.

'Hey, Dean,' she says. 'When you remember him. Remember the little stuff. The petty stuff. The shitty stuff. I'm sorry. One of us should. Please?'

He turns to look at her. There are landscapes in the lines of her lips; her eyes are hungry. 'Thank you,' he tells her. Amelia nods. She goes inside that house- that yellow madness of a house- and he watches her draw the curtains.

He drives away. Rain blurs the windscreen. He can barely see for it. Too drunk to drive but he's driving. Too broke to live but he's living. The road shimmers wet in the headlights. He's so tired. What's that noise? He grips the wheel.

When he realises how fast he's going he slows the car, even though the road's empty. What did he think he would get from Amelia? He drives. He's hungry for the first time in weeks. He saw Sam last about a month ago. God, that won't do. He needs to pinpoint the date. (What _is_ the date?) Thirty days, give or take, since. Since. That won't do. (Since the soft angles of his body as he walked away down the steps to the Bunker. It won't do. Give me back my angles; you can take me but please give me back his angles.)

He almost misses the tree as it rises out of the dark. Manages to yank the wheel sideways, squealing to a stop barely a metre from the trunk. Has he veered off the road somehow?- but no, it's still shining black in the headlights. But there hadn't been a tree here when he came this way. There shouldn't be a tree in the middle of the road anyway. Out of the car. He closes the door behind him; it's loud. The night is quietly rustling. Too warm for winter.

The tree sits, road choked and chewed by roots, rising like a chess knight into the moon. He cranes back his head. The gentle cry of leaves in wind. Leaves in November. Boughs creaking like a ship. Peace settles behind his eyes. The night's dry; why had he thought it was raining? Some enclosed insane thing in him wants to cry and scream and kill someone. His arms are tired. He sits on the Impala's hood. Stares blindly at the leaves against the stars. The stars stare back. He's heavy, heavy, heavy. The loneliness in him opens its throat to the sky, and throbs, and throbs, and sings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the wonderful response to this fic so far, guys. <3


	7. Chapter 7

Two days later, Dean passes out in the Impala.

He's still in Texas; had gone to see the old Hell House where they found a tulpa in '05. (He needs to stop doing this, going to these places where they were happy; it only makes him ache and leaves a layer of greasy _now_ over the memory. It only spoils it, but he can't stop; Dean needs to feel close to him. Or maybe he just needs.)

Sometime in the early hours he's driving away, lights from houses floating past like spiders' eyes. Perhaps something in him gives, then. He wakes up when the car swerves off the road and crashes into underbrush, a branch punching through the window. It stops inches from his eye.

He checks; the road's empty. Quickly he reverses. On the highway, he pulls the car over and sleeps.

When he wakes it's daylight. The sky is grey and spans a hand over the world. He forgets how much sky there is in Texas. There's broken glass on the dash. Another new window.

He's known, objectively, that what he's doing himself is stupid. It's self-flagellation. Not sleeping and not eating and all the rest of it. It's what Sammy does when he thinks he owes someone something. He knows that he's lost weight, that he can't keep going on coffee for fifty hours at a time. He knows that. And it wasn't that he didn't care; it was because he did. Because he got so sad and scared and furious every time he thought of Sam somewhere too scared to sleep, underfed, needing his help, that it seemed hideous to sit down and eat a burger. But he hadn't considered that he might need to be strong enough for both of them. And he can't find Sam if he starts swooning everywhere like some Victiorian damsel. He needs to start taking better care of himself (and it's not the start of any healing; it's not the start of getting over anything; it's common fucking sense, Dean, common fucking sense. And if any healing dares happen around him, well, he's on scab-picking duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.)

He gets back in the front seat; takes a minute for his mind to stop wheeling; drives.

There's a diner five miles down the highway. He pulls over. Inside, the clock says ten-thirty A.M. He avoids the bacon and pancakes, goes for waffles. Enjoying them makes him feel sick in itself but he hadn't even realised how hungry he was until now.

He spends the day driving towards South Dakota, heading for Bobby's salvage yard. He stops at a Biggerson's for lunch; orders ice-cream to remind him of Sam's cursed rabbit's foot, spins the (uninterested) waitress a yarn about how he and his brother were the millionth customers of the chain. It's another form of self-torture, but, hey, this one has a calorie count.

It's only twelve hours down to Sioux Falls. He dawdles. It's inexcusable, but he does. God knows why. He and Sam have been back to Singer Salvage exactly twice since Bobby's death. And he doesn't know what he's expecting to find. Inspiration of some sort, maybe. Whatever kept Bobby going all those years. Or just some good hard sensible advice, even if he has to put his ear to the earth to hear it. It's so strange not to be hungry all the time.

(And maybe the plain truth, the plain truth that you just won't hear, is that Sam's pushing up daisies, kicked the bucket, passed away, dead as a doornail, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.) (Maybe, just a little, just a little tiny bit, what you're really scared of is the idea that you could be happy without him.) (That you could be happier without him.) (No; no. No.)

He gets a room at a motel, even though he could make the rest of the drive. It's not even a horrible motel. The wall-dividers are shaped like giraffes. (The fact that he even notices is telling; he can't recall much of what the other places he's stayed over the last weeks have looked like. Going soft. Getting used to it.) (No.)

Before he leaves, he shaves.

It's a tougher decision than he thought it would be, when he's holding the razor. He's showered until the room steamed up and he has to wipe a porthole in the mirror to see himself. There's something Biblical about the beard. Vague impressions of wailing women refusing, in grief, to cut their hair. Maybe he won't cut it until he finds Sam. Maybe-

( _Grief_.)

He meets his own sunken eyes. He shaves.

*

The nearest diner is down the road in a pool of light. The waitress is bottle-blonde and smiles with strawberry lips when she asks him what he wants. The menu is dazzling. He flounders; picks the first thing listed. She scoots off.

He's the only customer there, and he watches the waitress. In her movements she seems to have passed the flitting stage and not quite attained bustling. She's pretty. Plenty to hold on to. Her smile crunches the corners of her eyes. (And they were never monogamous. It wasn't as if they were married. Sam would tell him to go for it.)

He hesitates. (Can't help wondering if he's too gaunt, too ragged; if it'd be like a flirting death's head. Grotesque. He's not sure he could bear being grotesque.)

When she brings him his food he smiles in a certain way. Drawls out a darlin' when he thanks her, and the way she slits her eyes tells him _yes_. As it turns out, her shift ends in half an hour.

He sits. Waits. Eats. Ignores the guilt that creeps in at the edges.

Thing is about he and Sam, they never defined what they were to each other. That was okay. That was just them. But there were boundaries that shifted and things that changed and places they no longer went and they'd been turning to other people less and less lately.

If he's honest, that scared him. The idea that he and Sam really could be all they needed. It seemed- too risky. Even if it was already true. And now he doesn't need to be scared of that any more. But only because the worst has happened. Maybe the last few weeks, running in a sleepless haze of booze and caffeine, were rock bottom; maybe now it'll be better, even just a little. (But no. No. Sam is gone. There aren't _degrees_ of badness for that. There shouldn't be any meaningful ways of improving that situation that don't involve finding Sam. There shouldn't be a way to make things better as long as Sam isn't here.)

Heck, maybe he does need to go home with the waitress. (He doesn't need to _go home_ with her, though. He could take her back to the motel. Now that Sam's not there.)

'Your place or mine?' she asks when she finishes her shift.

Dean pushes his empty mug aside. 'Yours,' he said. 'If you're cool with that.'

*

How many times has he done this? It might be hundreds. There's practically a script. It's all so natural it hurts.

Ros's place is a tiny house on the edge of a town. She laces her fingers through his- small small fingers- as she leads him to her room.

This, this is the easy part; the undressing, the kissing her crows' feet, the hands soft on his face. She's maybe a little younger than him. Maybe a little older than Sam. Safe. It's just that this time it's unutterably difficult. He can barely bring himself to kiss her. But he kisses her.

'S'okay,' she keeps whispering to him. 'S'okay.' Why is she saying that? She has no reason to. (Can she tell? Can she tell?) When she lies back her hands slide round the back of his head the way Sam's do. Did. Her belly is beautiful; warm flesh like cream in the moonlight. He bites it, and she exposes her neck.

Dean's always been a caretaker; a worshipper. It allows for gentleness.

(Gentleness always made Sam uncomfortable. It does not make Ros uncomfortable.) (Made? Makes.)

He comes back to himself to find Ros stroking his hair.

'It's okay, honey,' she's saying. 'You can cry. I've seen it all, sweetheart. Just let it out.'

But he can't. Can't. Thirty days, give or take, since the soft angles of his body as he walked away down the Bunker steps. It won't do. Give me back my angles; you can take me but please give me back his angles.

She holds him. He grinds his fist into her mattress. Blinks.

'Hush,' she says. 'Hush, hush.' Why is she saying that? He's not making any noise.

*

The way to Singer Salvage is automatic. There's no traffic out here; the roads are wide and dusty and bleakness settles like a stone in his belly.

He misses the Roadhouse. He misses Bobby's beat-up house with the red wallpaper and the lamps and the drawers full of herbs. He misses Ellen and Jo and Ash. He misses having somewhere to retreat to. He's sick of missing things. And thinking about Sam makes him sick too because it always loops round to he isn't dead he isn't dead. And he isn't dead.

Sam's been missing for this long before. It's just that last time Dean knew where he was, and that was the worst of it. There's only been one time when he's vanished for longer than this and Dean had no idea where he was; a hunt when he was nineteen. He couldn't even think about that for the longest time. Dad had been- it had been ugly. They'd found him in some witch's house in the end, being kept in a goddamn birdcage. (What the hell is it with Sam and cages anyway?)

This morning Dean checked the date. It's the twenty-third of November. That makes it forty-nine days since Sam vanished. After today that will be fifty. When Sam went missing when he was fifteen, he was gone forty-nine days. Today will make this the longest time he's ever not known where Sam was for. He tells himself it doesn't matter. That it just proves that he can and will find Sam again. He fished Sam out of Hell three times. He should be able to find him in America. (Assuming he's in America. Assuming he's not in Hell. Assuming he's not in the Empty. Assuming is all he has.)

He eats breakfast at a diner. Buys lunch at a gas station. His knees crack when he gets out of the car. It's been years since they went on a road-trip this long. Since before they found the Bunker. Sometimes all this- the motels, the fast food, the dust and grime- makes him feel like he's looking for the Sams of those days instead of _his_ Sam, _now_ Sam. It's an effort not to forget. It also feels very important not to forget. Past Sams have been loved enough. It's this Sam who needs him.

Bobby's salvage yard is alive with crickets. All that metal seems to hum in the heat. Dean's sweating through his shirt. He gets out of the car.

A moment of homage, first, to Bobby's old junker; he lays a hand on its bonnet. Grins. It's a ridiculous rite but it feels necessary.

'C'mon, old man,' he says. 'Help me out here.'

He walks down the path. Trails his fingers over the wrecks. They tower higher than his head. Each one's a placeholder for some dimly-remembered memory. Sam cut his shin on this one when he was eight; Dean had to take him for a tetanus shot. A year later Dean had sliced open his chin falling from that scrapheap. Here was where they stood when they captured Crowley for the third trial. Here is-

Momentum takes him a step farther; he stops cold. Dimly he registers his armpits prickle with sweat. He looks, forcing his head to turn.

Here is a hand. A limp pale hand, attatched to a wrist attached to an arm that's sticking out from the glass-less frame of a car window several feet above him. Here is a hand with a generous palm and card tricks for tendons and the most beautiful fingers he's ever seen. Here is a hand he'd know anywhere.

His brain's cooking in his skull. If he's wrong if he's wrong if he's wrong but he's not wrong. He stares up at those beautiful long ridiculous knobbly fingers. They curl over like a girl's folded legs. There's a fever going somewhere in him, making hot-cold waves, loosening his knees. He's shaking. He's standing very still.

Sam's hand. Sam's hand. Sam.

He reaches, his hand shoots out, he feels for a pulse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm running out of polite variations of 'feed me feedback'. but you get the gist, right?


	8. Chapter 8

Dean runs round the side of the car and climbs onto the pile. He manages to wrench the door of the car Sam's in open and there, there, slumped over in the passenger seat, with blood trailing from his nose over his other hand and glass embedded in his forehead and his clothes in tatters and his hair all hacked up and a bony knee showing through a massive hole in his jeans and _Sam_. It's the Samness that does it. The Samness in the sliding fall of his hair and the sweet slope of his nose. For a second everything in Dean locks up- like if he touches Sam, touches anything, touches this, Sam'll vanish. If Sam vanishes now he will break apart.

Then he gets himself together and moves forward. Slides his arms round Sam's (solid real) ribs and tugs him down the seat, out of the car. He manages to maneuver him to the ground without dropping either of them, he's not sure how, adrenaline can do that to you, right? Sam's pulse is fine, completely fine (he's not dead he's not dead he's not dead I told you I told you I was _right_ ) but he's out for the count, the blood beneath his nose a sharp contrast to white skin. He seems to wake a little as Dean slings his arm round his shoulder and stands them both up, says 'Dean,' in this cracked wrecked awful voice and something in Dean's breast just strains towards the sky because Sam's voice, Sam's voice, Sam's very own actual audible _voice_.

'Dean,' Sam croaks out again. 'Dean, something's- something's'

'Shhhh,' he says and it comes out choked. 'Shhh. Shhh. C'mon.'

'No. No, something's wrong, Dean, something's-'

He loads Sam into the Impala's backseat. Shushes him because his vision's already blurring. 'Hey; hey. I got you. I got you.' Sam's eyes are burning holes in him. He just wants to sit down and cry. He wants to hug him until bones snap. He wants to hit a wall. 'I got you, Sammy, shit, you're safe, you're safe, you're safe-'

'Dean-'

'Sammy. Sam.'

'I love you-'

'Shhh, shhh, it's alright; it's alright-'

'It's not- Dean, it's not, it's not-'

Dean floors the pedal and they lurch out of Bobby's yard, going fast, he's half-mad and half-blind with tears, he needs Sam to touch his face again, he needs to wrap his arms round him again-

'Dean,' comes Sam's voice, and the creak of leather as he moves, and a sob, 'I need to tell you something. Only I can't remember. I can't remember.'

'Shh, Sam. God, please.' He can't take this. Not until they're inside. 'You really had me worried, huh, kiddo? Two whole goddamn months, you princess. What, our Vegas trip not enough for you or somethin'?' He can feel tears streaking his face. 'Hope you at least checked into a good resort, huh? Got some sun? It's okay, Sam. Nearly there. We're nearly there.' He turns his head to see him and decides that once they get a motel room, once he's determined that Sam's injuries are non-fatal, he's going to look at him; just look at him for as long as he wants, just drink him in, just learn him like a prayer to fold on tattered paper and carry in your pocket over mountain odysseys, just _see_.

Sam goes quiet after that, in the last couple minutes before Dean pulls off at the first motel. Relief's churning up his guts. It seems too much of a gift to get Sam back this easily, this suddenly, to have the agony of two months vanish in five minutes. It seems excessive. But he's here and he's warm and he's breathing and his eyes are burning holes in Dean and this is manageable. He glances towards the back.

The seat's empty. It's empty.

Something like shock. Or a silent earthquake. He looks again. Empty. Samless. He looks in the leg space. He gets out of the car- scrambling- and looks wildly round the parking lot. It's empty. He looks back in the car.

It's not so much one great pain as a series of detonations. His head spins. He catches himself on the Impala.

His face is already tight with tear-tracks. He gets in the drivers' seat. There's unspent violence throbbing in his arms. (Unspent tenderness.) A sob escapes, harsh and ugly, and then another; he rests his head against the steering wheel. The leather smells so gentle and then he comes unstuck. He bawls into the wheel. Sobbing so hard he can barely breathe. This isn't the way a grown man cries. Fuck that. Fuck that. This is for Sam.

This is how it happens; you lose someone. And all of a sudden you've got to figure out what you mean without that person. And if they're the reason you get up in the morning, if they're the one who helps you sleep at night, if they're the one who keeps a brochure for a fucking retirement home in a fucking engraved box and tells you he wants to grow old with you, then that's just tough. It doesn't mean that you'll grow old alone. It means that you'll grow old without him. It means that he'll never leave you. It means that you'll wake up at three a.m gasping because you've forgotten what his hands look like when he prays. It means that the sixteen battered polaroids you have of him will become the way everyone except you remembers him, and that'll be the loneliest thing in the world. It means that you wish you'd made him laugh more when you'd had the chance. It means that you wish his life had meant something that pertained only to him. It means that you hope he knew that you loved him. It means that his life meant a million important and wonderful things and that he saved the world and saved you and saved all those grateful victims from all those terrible fates and that you'd trade all that if it meant you could keep him with you. It means that your heart is broken. It means that you'll never touch his wrists again. It means that you'll never eat another burger sitting beside him on a plastic bench. It means that he'll never turn to you and show you a news article and say 'get this' again. It means that you'll go bad and bitter and all those things he thought he could save you from. It means that his faith in you was wasted. It means that his faith in God was wasted. It means that the baby you held to your chest is dead. It means that the runty kid you dropped off at school is dead. It means that the bright-eyed nerd you fetched from Stanford is dead. It means that the boy who told you it was okay and jumped into hell is dead. It means that the man with soft hair and gentle fingers who released souls from jars and curled on his side in white pyjamas, the one who tried so hard, the uncomplaining, the undeserving, is gone.

And when it comes down to it, what it really means is that Sam was kind and good and gentle and _you'll never see him again_ , and you know why? Because nobody cares. Because the world's run at a loss. Because it was inevitable. Because they are literally the only ones in this craphole of a universe who ever gave a shit about it enough to do some good. Because they're good. Because they give a damn. And that's just unforgivable, right? It's just unforgivable.

He cries until he can't any more. Then he turns the key in the ignition and backs out, retracing the route to Singer Salvage. He hunts all over Bobby's yard and finds nothing. Not even blood spots. He cruises up and down the road again. Screams Sam's name, voice scratched.

This isn't okay. This just isn't okay. He can't do this. He shouldn't have to do this. This is too much to ask. It's too much to ask him to live without his heart for two months. To give back only to take again, and the cruelty of it, the senseless cruelty of it, and never even getting a chance to realise he was back before he was gone again. Sam was here and real and solid. It wasn't a hallucination. They touched. Sam left flowers. Sam had been so scared. The things he'd said. The things he'd shushed. Like warnings. Like he knew. There's something going on, of course, and he needs to be sensible, he does, but he can't be sensible right now. He needs to be stupid and blind and broken just for a little while. He's not been letting himself hurt- not really, not the way he could have. He needs to let himself hurt, just for a few minutes longer. He needs to give way.

He gives way.

*

Dean, midnight, a motel. Blood on his knuckles matching the dents in the wall. Hands over his face. There's a gun beside him. Blood on his knuckles; blood on the pearl grip; blood, a little, in his hair. The room is very dark.

It's 00:01. He is not drunk. He is terribly sober.

Dean's hand reaches for the gun. He picks it up, carefully, as if weighing it (he's had it nearly half his life). A year ago this gun nearly killed his brother.

The gun is raised. He hunches over, the barrel slotting gently into his mouth. The metal tastes cold and strange. Finger on the trigger.

The bullet would pass through the roof of his mouth, clean through the medulla oblongata, shattering the parietal bone. Dead. Seconds. Simple. He won't, of course. After all, Sam could be in Hell. There would be no-one to get him out. But it's a nice thought. A comforting thought.

His finger squeezes on the trigger, then relaxes. He puts the gun down, gets up, and goes into the bathroom. He washes the blood off his knuckles. He brushes his teeth. Then he goes back into the room. He lies down on the bed and goes to sleep. All this has taken him ten minutes.

*

Dean sleeps.

He's in a forest. It's like nothing he's seen on earth. Perhaps comparable to some of the stranger, more melancholy corners of Purgatory, where even the moon seemed to wail on the wind. He looks down at his boots in the grass. The forest floor is very flat. Poppies are scattered in clusters round the trees, poppies like silver ghosts in the light of the huge blind staring moon. Each tree is hollow, twisted like a shroud, but pale blossoms cling to their branches. A wild wind sings through like moonlight and the petals come away in drifts. An owl hoots. Dean turns to see.

'Dean,' comes a voice.

He looks back round. Sam stands in front of him, silhouetted against the moon. His hair curls around his face in the breeze. His eyes are soft and dark. That person is your soulmate, he thinks. Look at him. Look how beautiful he is.

'Hey,' says Sam in a quiet voice.

Something unbearable rises in Dean's throat.

'Hey,' he says.

He wonders if he's dead. Perhaps he pulled the trigger after all and just hallucinated that he didn't. Perhaps he pulled it in his sleep. God, that would be humiliating. Or perhaps someone came in and shot him.

'Am I dead?' he asks.

Sam smiles. 'Just sleeping.' His smile hurts Dean. It looks like it might be hurting Sam as well. 'Look- come walk with me.'

They walk among the trees. Each one casts a shadow like a portent. They cut crazy dreams out of the grass.

'So,' says Sam. There is a careful gap between them.

'The vanishings,' says Dean. 'The trees. The random comas. The flowers. You.'

'Yes.'

'Tell me.'

'I can't.'

'Sammy.'

'I can't, Dean.' Sam's hands. Sam's fingers fanned in suppression like a child's drawing of the sun. 'You wouldn't understand yet. It wouldn't- it wouldn't help. You need to figure it out on your own.' Before he can respond- 'I know that sucks. I know that's a shitty thing to say. But it's the only thing I'm saying.'

'Are you in Hell?'

Sam draws back. 'No.'

'Are you real?'

'Yes.'

'Tell me how to find you,' he says. 'Sam. Sam. Tell me how.'

Sam is silent.

'Please,' he says. 'It's killing me. I swear it's killing me. I need to see you. Not-' he waves a hand- 'Dream-you or whatever weird version. You. Physical, _real_ you.'

Sam's shoulders slump a little. His eyes are wet. 'Dean,' he says.

'C'mon, Sam. You just- you just disappeared. What do you think that does to a guy, huh? Give me something to work with here. Please.'

'I don't know,' Sam says. 'Dean- you think I know some great secret here- I don't. But I know how we can be together again, and it isn't by you shooting youself.'

'Why'd you appear to me? What was that all about?'

'I've been trying to do that for ages,' says Sam. 'They say- we can. But it hurts to be there. I've been there with you before- you just never saw me. You never heard me. Until- until yesterday.'

Dean frowns. 'So... why...?'

'Could you see me this time?' Sam reaches out. He dabs at Dean's forehead with his thumb. 'This, I think.'

Sam's thumb is smeared with bright blood. Dean touches his forehead. The sign Lenuţa painted on is long gone, back in the waking world; it make sense, he supposes, that it would still be fresh here.

'You don't need to be strong all the time, you know,' Sam says quietly. 'It's okay.'

'It's really not.'

'I love you.'

'I know.

'We'll be together.'

'You know?'

'I trust you.'

'I'm sorry,' says Dean. 'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm-'

'Don't be sorry. Take care of yourself.'

It has the tone of a parting. Dean tenses. 'What the hell is this place?'

'Ah.' Sam's eyes fall into shadow. 'Dean- something's happening to the world.'

'I know that, for fuck's sake. Where are we?'

'You're going to see me again very soon-'

'Sam, where are we?'

'I promise everything's going to be-'

'Sam!'

Sam stops.

'Quit fucking speaking in riddles. 'Where are we?'

Sam looks at him with something curious and alien in his eyes, and Dean shivers. (What does it mean? What does it mean?).

'This is a good place,' says Sam. 'A place of rest.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are love. <3


	9. Chapter 9

He leaves the motel at six A.M the next morning, while it's too dark to see the room properly. After half an hour he pulls in at a diner.

While he's eating, he finally manages to pull himself together and call Jody. He'd called once before, to nothing; he'd been too scared to repeat the call in case nobody picked up again, in case Jody and Alex and Claire had vanished too. Or been found comatose. But something's different now- he's still worried, horribly, in that itchy way that never really goes, and Jody doesn't answer. Alex and Claire don't answer.

The vanishings, the comas, the flowers, the trees. It adds up to something. Maybe something too big for him to see right now.

He glances over at the TV on the diner wall. The disappearences are mounting up.

'They say it's one in sixty,' came the sandpaper-rough voice of the waitress.

Dean looks round. 'What?'

'The missing folks.' She snaps her gum. 'One in sixty. The stats just came in. D'you reckon it's aliens?'

'Uh,' he says. 'I guess- no?'

Her ponytail swings when she walks back to the counter. The diner's empty but for them. 'I reckon it's aliens. Don't seem like there's much else it could be.'

'Are people panicking?'

She's looking at the TV now; doesn't move her eyes when she answers. 'Uh, yeah. Is that so surprisin'? I mean- one in sixty, y'know? 'Cept for the folks who reckon it's an act of God or whatever. I got an uncle who reckons that.' She turns away and begins wiping down tables. 'He's over the goddamn moon.'

*

A wide and dusty and deserted highway. The sky's a distant pink all around him; sunrise erupts in livid gold. Moon hanging like a ghostly flower.

He drives aimlessly, burnt out, stopping for coffee at intervals. This whole thing is killing him. He's still waiting for something- for some sort of indication. At eleven, he pulls over, gets out, and fishes Dad's journal from the trunk. He's already been through it a thousand times. He's not sure what he's expecting.

When he goes to get back in the car Sam is in the passenger seat.

Dean stops cold, door half-open.

'Hey,' Sam says.

In the first moment all he sees is Sam. Then he realises- this isn't _his_ Sam. This isn't _now_ Sam. This Sam is, what- twenty-three? Twenty-four? His hair's only long enough to curl around his jaw, face soft and sharp and shockingly young. There's a cast poking out from under his sleeve, and Dean remembers it suddenly- Sam's wrist broken by a zombie chick, not long after Dad died.

Tears in his eyes and swelling his throat. He's cried too much lately.

Sam looks up. 'You gonna get in or what?'

A sense of occupying a dream comes over Dean; he gets in, closes the door.

*

'Why are you here?' he asks Sam, gentle as he can.

Sam looks at him. Those kind eyes. 'Can't we just talk, Dean?' His voice- his voice is so much higher. Christ. Dean tries to wet his lips. He can't think.

'What d'you want to talk about?' he gets out after a while.

Sam twitches out a tentative smile. As if he's surprised. 'Do I scare you?' he asks quietly.

'What?' Dean reacts like he's been slapped. 'No! Are you kidding me?' He's a kid, he's a _kid_ \- how is it possible that Dean could be scared of him? Is that really what Sam used to think? Did Dean somehow not notice? 'What the fuck made you think that?'

Toying with a loose thread on his jeans. Downcast eyes. (Now-Sam would have looked Dean in the face.) 'It's the way you look at me sometimes,' says Sam, staring at his feet. And before Dean can react- 'Not like I'm a f- a freak,' he assures him quickly. Like this is already a sore spot for them both. 'Or anything like that. But like I'm- different. Y'know? Something else. Something- other. And I am- I know I am- but I just wondered.'

He looks up, almost pleadingly.

'Please, Dean- don't try and brush this off. This isn't a teasing thing. I'm serious here.'

Dean is not awake enough for this.

There's a number of ways he could react to this. Ten years ago he'd've made a joke. Cleared the air a little, but not forever. And maybe only a couple years back he'd've pulled him into a hug and told him with the feirceness of a loving mother that there was nothing wrong with Sam, that he's never thought of him like that, that Sam is wonderful and bright and good and can't let this stuff fuck with him.

Christ, he thinks. Have they ever really been honest with each other?

'I was never scared of you,' he says. 'But you're right. You're right. There were moments when I wasn't sure who- or what- you were. When I thought- even at the back of my mind- Sam's not human. Sam's different. Sam's not one of us.'

Sam's staring at him, face blanched, like what he was going to say got caught in his throat. His hands- paused halfway to his face- quiver once. Dean feels horrible. He goes on.

'I knew you were different. I knew you had something wrong with you, okay? When the visions started- I knew. Maybe I felt it even sooner.' He stops. Breathes. 'But you know what, Sam? I didn't give a damn. Not really. You've got something wrong with you- well, who the fuck cares? We've all got something wrong with us. What d'you want, a certificate? Please. Psychic crap is small fry, kiddo. I'm a freakin' bloodthirsty killer. Bobby was- Bobby's an old drunk with machetes in his kitchen cupboards. And Dad- well, he was the worst of the goddamned lot.'

The white's visible all round Sam's irises. 'You're- you're not joking,' he says.

Dean stares at the road. 'No. I'm not joking.'

'So- it doesn't bother you? Me being different? Me going dark?'

'Hell yeah it bothers me. It bothers me that you might get hurt over this. It bothers me that you think you're freakin' Carrie. It bothers me that apparently we got a bunch of idiots wanting to kill you. It bothers me that it bothers you. But it doesn't bother me that you'll go darkside, Sam.'

He thinks of Ruby; of demon blood; of Cold Oak; of all the things this Sam is too young to know.

'It doesn't bother me at all,' he says resolutely.

Sam's looking at him like he hung the sun.

'Yeah, yeah, don't go all weepy on me,' says Dean. His voice cracks. Sam twitches a smile.

He's missed that smile. He's missed this kid.

For this Sam, their dad's only just died. This Sam has probably never considered such a thing as a life without Bobby. This is a Sam who has not yet died. Who has never seen an angel- who still, naively, believes in their goodness. Who has never been to Hell. There's always been something about Sam that makes Dean want to hide him away. Something so unprotected. He's not sure whether that got better or worse with the years.

He wishes suddenly that they'd never seen the workings of the universe. That they'd died as innocent as any ordinary hunter could be. That they'd been allowed to go on thinking they were so hard-bitten, so knowledgeable, as they did in that early wake of Dad's death. Innocence. Ignorance. Who cares? He misses it. This Sam has never been to Hell; this Sam barely knows what it is to be traumatised. And maybe the Dean of ten years ago- this Sam's Dean- was the same. He'd never thought of himself as innocent. But before Hell-

Sam's eyes are sad.

'Why can't you let yourself have any goddamn peace, Dean?'

Next time Dean looks round, he's gone. Dream-logic, he thinks. But he's not dreaming.

*

After Sam's gone, Dean stops in the first town he comes to. The library's computers probably date back to the Stone Age but they work. He itches for a drink but he doesn't want to get kicked out.

He searches **seeing your loved one everywhere**

He searches **seeing your missing loved one everywhere**

He searches **signs that a missing person is alive**

He searches **where have they all gone**

He searches **why are there so many people missing**

He searches **how to deal with a missing loved one**

He searches **what do dead flowers mean mythology**

He searches **what do dead flowers mean lore**

He searches **what to say to people in dreams**

He searches **what do you tell people to make them feel better**

He searches **why are people disappearing**

He searches **am i going crazy**

*

It's a week before he sees Sam again, and by that time he's getting antsy, moving from motel to motel, getting sick of staying in a place before he's been there five hours.

He'd hoped, after Sam's most recent appearence, that that visit would be the start of a pattern. Had been waiting- without quite admitting to himself that he was waiting- for it to happen again.

He's got a routine by now. Eat at a diner, ask at the gas station if Sam's been seen, ask at bars, ask at shops, book into a motel, call Cas, call Crowley, sleep. But despite all this- all this asking- it's the drives between the towns that he can't help expecting to yield results. He can't help watching out the windows for a body crumpled at the side of the road. Can't help glancing at the seat beside him, waiting for Sam to appear there again.

For the first couple of days, he does everything with renewed energy, smiling at waitresses, winding the window down to let the wind ruffle his hair as he drives. But after a week he's flagging. There's a hideous doubt coming over him and he tries not to consider it. Sam will appear to him again- there's something going on- it's not just going to stop there. What happened at Bobby's- his dream- the appearance of a completely different Sam- it feels like the start of a new phase. As the days pass and he watches a dozen newsreaders with their barely-concealed panic over the ever-rising disappearence stats, as he drives by fields of dying wildflowers, his fear threatens to drown the bit of him that watches out of the window for signs of Sam as he drives.

On the seventh day he pulls over at a Gas-n-Sip just outside a new town. It's three in the afternoon; when he enters the store it's oddly busy, maybe six people in there. It's not something he'd've bothered noticing a month ago, but now he looks and realises- one woman's filled a basket with nothing but huge bottles of water. Stocking up?

He looks round. Most of the others seem to be buying canned food in bulk. He feels cold. They're preparing for something. Can he blame them? If he was a civilian he'd think the world was ending right about now. And maybe it is.

Dean stares at the people. Their eagerness as they pile food into carts until they're almost spilling over. As he stands in the aisle the bell rings; someone else pushes past him, going straight for the non-perishables.

He feels a sudden wave of disgust. So this is what happens when people realise they're in danger- this is the world he and Sam have tried to save. The woman with all the water bottles is loading her basket up with jerky. She looks like she's putting her entire soul into deciding which kind to buy. When she moves he hears the jangle of coins. What a bunch of ignorant selfish greedy morons, the lot of them- he's not being fair, probably, but God- what a mess. What a nasty mess.

At the counter he waits, tapping a foot impatiently, for some guy to pay for all the stuff he's bought. He takes a ridiculously long time to count out his coins. Dean's revulsion rises. His body might not be enough to contain it. When the guy turns to leave, Dean doesn't move, leaving the man to push past him.

Dean turns to the counter and clears his throat. He takes his picture of Sam from his wallet. It's got a thick white crease through the middle, now, obliterating Sam's eyes. The first time Dean saw that he felt like crying- he's taken such care to keep the picture getting damaged, to preserve what he has left of Sam.

The cashier is staring at the computer. Dean clears his throat again. The kid still doesn't look round. He's rawboned, gawky in the ugly blue vest. Zits pocking his face red-raw.

'Hey,' says Dean. 'Kid.'

At last the kid turns to him.

'Hey,' he says. 'Listen, I'm here looking for my brother- just wondering if you've seen him at all.' It's his routine. Smile; act natural. 'He's real tall-' hand held up- 'brown eyes, long girly hair-'

'No,' says the kid.

'What?' He's not even- 'Look, hear me out. I just want to know-'

'No,' says the kid. He looks at Dean. His eyes are half-lidded. It's like he's not even listening. 'If you're not buying anything, you got to go.'

'What?'

'If you're not buying anything, you got to go. You're holding up the queue.'

Dean looks behind him. The woman with the water and the jerky is waiting to pay.

Pushing down anger, he takes a packet of gum from a rack. Slams it to the counter. Hands over a dollar. Says, tone as reasonable as he can make it, 'So have you seen my brother?'

He holds out the photo between finger and thumb.

The kid takes it from him with a dirty-nailed hand; glances at it. Fury rises in Dean as the kid tosses it back over the counter, careless, and shrugs. 'I dunno.'

'You dunno what?'

'Whether I've seen him. Look, dude-'

'How can you not know? You've either seen him or you haven't.'

'You got to go,' the kid repeats. 'You're hoding up the queue.'

'I don't care about your fucking queue. Have you seen my brother?'

'I'll call the cops-'

'Have you seen my brother?'

Silence follows; Dean realises he was yelling. The kid's stopped, terrified, clutching his phone. The woman behind him has backed away.

'Jesus Christ,' he says. 'Jesus fucking Christ.'

He feels a million feet tall. He looks round at everyone in the room. Fuck you. Fuck you for not caring about Sam. Fuck you for not knowing who he is. Fuck you.

'Selfish dicks,' he says. 'You're all selfish fucking assholes. How fucking dare you? How the fuck are you all so blind? Jesus Christ, that kid saved you, all of you, _we_ saved you, and you couldn't give less of a damn, could you? What's it matter if the world goes down the toilet as long as you've still got everything you want, right?' His heart's pounding with fury. He can hear the rush of blood. Every eye on him.

'Fuck you all,' he says. 'Fuck you all. I hope you all die. I hope this world goes off at the fucking deep end and you all die. 'Cause me and Sammy sure won't be digging you out this time.'

He slams his shoulder into the door to open it, and leaves.

When he gets into the car Sam is in shotgun.

'Jesus _fuck_!'

Dean's hands hover. This is- still not now-Sam. But close- very close. What's that saying about watching pots? As soon as he stopped wondering whether Sam would appear, Sam appeared. But Sam isn't looking good.

He's asleep, head sagging onto his chest, arm in that sling, and it's a stark contrast to his twenty-four year-old self- _that_ Sam had had a certain power about his body, a suggestion of great strength. This Sam- the lines of his body are painful. Gaunt. Dean's heart keens.

He almost doesn't want to wake him up. Before he can decide one way or another, though, Sam's lifting his head, blinking hard.

When he sees Dean his eyes go round and wet. 'D- Dean?'

There's obviously something very wrong here.

'You- you're-' Sam seems to be struggling with something. 'I don't understand. You're- I watched you- and you-'

Dean puts it together then. This is the Sam from after he died and became a demon. This is the Sam who took off torturing demons for Dean's whereabouts. It was one of those subjects that they tiptoed round, this point in their lives. And Dean hadn't thought-

He stops; Sam is hunched over, crying into his enormous bony hands.

Fuck. Jesus- fuck. When was the last time-? His throat's aching. He puts an arm round Sam's shoulders. Waits a little; Sam doesn't object. He pulls him close.

They sit, leaning against each other, Sam's hands over his face, until Sam stops and knuckles his eyes and wipes them on his sleeve. He doesn't apologise. Not that Dean would want him to- but still- most Sams would apologise.

This Sam is so close to how Dean was before he decided that in order to find Sam he had to take better care of himself. He wants to pull off at a motel and feed him or something but he's scared that if he does that Sam'll literally vanish; he settles for pulling over to the side of the road.

When he's turned the engine off, he turns to Sam; lifts a hand to cup his cheek. He's not sure where the gesture comes from- there's something archaic about it- but it seems to work. Some of the animal hurt leaves Sam's face.

'Dean,' he says, slowly.

'Yeah.'

'You were dead. I watched you- I- I thought I was never going to see you again.'

'Never, kiddo.' Dean pauses but he's got to ask. He doesn't know whether this is really the Sam from that time, and to him this is a dream- or whether this is simply a construction for Dean's benefit. But he's got to ask. 'Has anyone been helping you?'

'Well- yeah- Cas. He's sick but he's really trying. Dean-'

'Helping you not drink your lunch?'

'Well, no, not really. Dean- this is a dream. Right?'

'Maybe for you, yeah.'

Sam wilts. 'Right.'

'It doesn't make any difference, Sam. I'm really here, dream or not. I promise you, you're going to find me.'

'You can promise that?'

'Yes. I swear.'

'Tomorrow?'

Dean pauses. Sam's still got that sorrow graven into his face, but there's something starting to shine there.

'Tomorrow,' he promises, although his heart's hurting. 'You're going to find me tomorrow, Sam.'

He regrets it almost instantly. Sam's transfigured. It's like he's forgotten that lying's a thing. Dream-logic.

'Thank you,' he tells Dean earnestly, glassy-eyed. 'Thank you, Dean.' Dean realises he's probably half-drunk. He suddenly feels like shit for drinking after he'd promised Sam he'd try to leave off. Lower than dirt.

'Dean,' says Sam. 'We understand each other, right?'

'Yeah- Sam- of course.'

It's like comforting a child. Maybe this Sam needs that. Maybe Dean needs that too.

Sam half-laughs, half-sighs. 'I kinda hoped we did. And you know how much I-?'

'Yes.' And he does know, now.

'Good. Good.' Yes, Sam's definitely pretty buzzed. 'You know I used to lie awake at nights- mostly after the Gadreel thing- worried that you thought I hated you.' He turns his eyes on Dean. 'You didn't, right?'

'No, Sam.' And he hadn't. He'd thought Sam disdained him, if anything. He'd felt like a grunt. He'd tried not to care. Tried to tell himself he had integrity. And mostly it had worked- mostly. Until black eyes and a hammer and a hole in the Bunker wall.

'I didn't hate you,' Sam says. 'I promise, Dean. I sort of wanted to, even- I was so mad at you- but I couldn't. I don't think I was made for that.'

'Sam...'

'I miss you so much,' Sam says. 'I can't do it, Dean. I just miss you so much.'

My God, Dean thinks, my God, what is this for? Does this help advance the situation in any way? Will this eventually lead to their reuniting? How can he possibly trust to that, when he's got Sam crying in the seat next to him and he knows that this time tomorrow that seat'll probably be empty again? How is Dean supposed to make anything _stick_?

And then, of course, Sam vanishes before Dean can so much as see if he can feed him via dream-osmosis or something, and he's left twelve times more confused than before with his head on the steering-wheel, aching for his own Sam and sick, so so sick of this push-pull, this baiting.

*

The next time Sam appears is two days later, before Dean's even begun letting himself expect him, and he appears in shotgun at sundown as Dean's looking round for a motel.

'Hey,' comes a voice, and Dean jumps- had grown so used to his own silence. It takes him less than a second to get into gear. He pulls the car over, reaches round to the backseat, retrives a length of iron chain there, and proceeds to tie Sam to the seat with it, finishing with a jaunty padlock. Sam looks more surprised than anything else.

'There,' says Dean. 'It might help. We can dream.'

'Right,' says Sam. 'I'm not really sure how to respond to this.'

This still isn't his Sam, of course. This Sam is- well, he's ripped. Dean can see the muscle bulging under his shirt. But his face still has the last traces of boyishness. He's tanned- veins in his arms- he looks _healthy_.

'Hey,' Dean says. 'Hey, there, Sam.'

'Hey, Dean,' says Sam- with a particular cadence to it that Dean hasn't heard in years. This Sam seems unfazed by the chains and the car and Dean. Perhaps he just thinks he's dreaming.

'So what's going down out there in the world?' Dean asks. He's got to know.

'Not a whole lot,' says Sam airily. 'Impending armageddon, dick angels, talking teddy bears. The usual.'

Pre-Apocalypse, then. This Sam could well be on demon blood.

'Huh,' Dean says. He turns the key in the ignition; starts driving. Sam gazes through the window. He seems unruffled. It makes Dean so sad- so desperately sad- even for those days just after Hell, when he was an alcoholic mess. He had Sam back, and for the first six months or so that was all that mattered. He's not sure when that began to change. Ruby, probably. He and Sam just stopped knowing each other at some point, it feels like. God- if he could go back- if he could do it again-

'So Sam,' he says. 'I think we should have a talk. Y'know- properly.'

'Oh,' says Sam. He frowns. 'Is something the matter?'

'No. No. I just meant- like a chat.'

The frown deepens. 'You know how to chat? Man, Dean, you've been holding out on me.'

And it just slips out. 'Cry me a river, pansy-ass.'

Sam laughs. Dean glows. A tiny bit of verbal sparring and it makes him feel like he and Sam are a part of each other again. (Sinner _. It was college. It was probably oregano anyways_. Rebel.)

'Sorry if I've seemed kinda distant lately,' Sam's saying. 'I've just had a lot on my mind. I mean, not that you haven't- but you know.'

'It's fine, Sam. Don't worry about it.' Just being with you is enough. Dean suddenly regrets not taking more photographs of soft-faced Sam when they were younger. The regret passes just as quickly; he doesn't want his only memories of Sam frozen in pixels. And it's not as if he can ever forget his face. (Please, please, please don't let him forget Sam's face.)

'I want you to know something,' Sam says, suddenly resolute.

'Go on,' says Dean.

'This is a high-risk job, right? We could die any hour of any day. Or either one of us could. And either one of us might have to make a sacrifice, at some point- might have to do the right thing.' Sam pauses. 'Whatever the cost.'

Dean nods.

'What I'm saying is, I'm not- I don't place a lot of hope in surviving this, Dean.'

Ah. So it's nearly time for Sam to kill Lilith. Hopped up on blood. At a guess, though, Dean'd say he's not done his stint in the panic room yet. He suspects that if he had, he'd look at Dean with something other than hopeless worship in his eyes. He thinks of Amelia's story of the dog who waited thirty years for its dead master to come home. Wishes he'd asked what had happened to it.

'If what I think comes to pass does- and I hope it won't- there's a few things- I don't want to die- but I'm tired. I just- Dean, I can't live like this forever- waking up every morning and wondering what- sickening awful thing will happen today. I want it to be over. And for the first time I feel like it will- soon.'

Dean can't speak. Thinks of the Cage. What sickening, awful, atrocious horror-thing will happen today, Sam.

'I want you to know that I'm doing this for you,' Sam says, all desperate eyes and the shining knowledge that he's doing something good. And Dean should be saying no, stop, don't, but what the heck. It wouldn't change anything if he did. 'I know, kid. Do what you gotta.'

Their eyes meet and their desperation is so nearly of the same colour that Dean lets go of the wheel and grabs Sam by the jaw and kisses him.

*

The motel's scuzzy and by the hour. It doesn't matter. They pile onto the bed. Dean is trying not to worry that Sam could disappear any second.

They're naked, and it's strange how Sam's body ripples, golden-tanned; even spread out in sex he takes up far more space than now-Sam. Maybe it's a presence thing as well as a physical thing. This Sam arches, ripples like the sea, unashamed, glowing. Dean, usually so gentle, so careful, bites. Bone has always seemed so much more vulnerable to him than muscle. Weird, really- after all, you can cut muscle and you can't cut bone. But bone is naked; bone is obscenely naked. Maybe that's why Sam's thinness in recent years has bothered (and fascinated, and provoked) him so much. All those funny sweet spots where dents and hollows grow; he knows them all. Mountain-range of collarbone, cobblestone knees, cradling hipbones.

This Sam doesn't have many bone-spots left, but he has enough.

Dean seeks out them all. He's always wanted more of Sam than Sam was willing to give. This is how they reconcile that. Sam offers up the backs of his knees; Dean pretends to forget that the real way to Sam's soul is through his eyes, and their gentle tragedy.

What would he give to have those first years alone with Sam back? Their year looking for Dad back? The year Sam died in the mud back? His year before Hell back? What would he give for them to be young and angry and shining bold again? What would he give to live the rest of his life frozen on the day after he fetched Sam from Stanford? On the bridge, in the dust-gold sunrise, on empty roads where nobody goes and nothing ever has to fade or lose its glamour?

He'd give heart and soul; body and mind. He's aching. We're aching.

'I've missed this,' Sam's panting out. 'Dean- I've missed this. It's all I've wanted for so long-'

Strange how this Sam calls out where now-Sam would bite his lip bloody; strange how he strokes his cock where now-Sam would press two fingers to his forehead; strange how their hair fans over the pillow in that too-familiar way. Strange how this Sam is unashamed where now-Sam tries to curl away and hide; strange how this Sam begs where now-Sam only looks with wide wet eyes. Dean's possessed with an agony of missing his Sam and a fierce protective love of this Sam. He pushes in hard, and yes; muscle gives. Muscle makes room where bone cannot.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much to my regular commenters. the wait is nearly over ;) & of course to everyone else who's been kind enough to leave feedback. you've all been incredibly supportive & encouraging <3 it's manna to my soul.


	10. Chapter 10

It's three weeks between Sam vanishing from their motel room and his next appearance, and the third week nearly sends Dean mad.

The wait between Sam's appearances is agonising- more so every time, since he's got no idea when or how these visits will end. Sam's perfectly corporeal in them, but if he's not a spirit then he's something like it.

And there's no-one to provide answers. He's picked over Dad's journal a dozen times since Sam vanished, as if he wasn't already familiar with every line. He's tried every contact on the list; the few who answered were as bewildered as he is.

He doesn't listen to the news any more. It's too ridiculous. They're all panicking. The disappearence stats are one in thirty now. The world population's decreased by a few million. More people have been found asleep. The President vanished last week. As he drives he keeps seeing groups of people- pilgrims, fanatics, gangs- walking at the roadsides with signs. Monks are seeing a revival. It's all getting pretty boring. Boring and sad.

More and more often the roadside diners are closed. He takes to buying food at gas stations. Sometimes the motels are closed too, and then he has to sleep in his car. He doesn't care. He looks at his watch and he thinks maybe when the hand gets to half past Sam will be here. Maybe by the time the hands have done two rounds of the face Sam will have come and gone. It's never true.

For the first two weeks he can tell himself that Sam's taken this long before to appear. He can stand it- just about. But as two weeks creeps into three there's a fear coming over him that the act of sex consummated something- broke some metaphysical bond- fulfilled whatever it was in Sam that kept him coming back for Dean. And, fuck, maybe for Sam- wherever Sam is- that's a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing if it broke whatever was holding him here. But Dean isn't ready.

On the third day of the third week he's regretting the sex pretty bitterly. Wondering if, if they hadn't done that, Sam would be with him right now. Wondering which Sam; scrawny twelve-year-old, maybe, or penitent demon-blood addict of the apocalypse. Or Gadreel-possessed-Sam. He hopes it isn't the last Sam so hard that he'd almost rather have no Sam at all than that Sam; Dean doesn't know how he'd face him.

He imagines out conversations, sometimes. Elaborate discussions with various Sams; some of them involve Sam begging forgiveness, and in some of them it's the other way round. They all end with Sam vanishing because Dean won't let them end any other way.

Halfway through week three, Dean decides that if Sam hasn't appeared after a month he's going to shoot himself in the head. The next day, he changes his mind- after all, maybe Sam will just take longer this time- and though Dean no longer thinks Sam's in Hell, anything's possible, right?

Not that he's heard of any activity in the celestial or demonic spheres lately.

But in reality it's three weeks. And then it's, as ever, while Dean's driving.

'Hey,' comes a voice. Dean's heart jolts; the car spins briefly before he can right it.

This Sam seems huger and harder than pre-apocalypse-demon-blood Sam. He lounges in his seat, cats' eyes glinting, hair ruffling in the breeze from the open window, hands idle with a kind of callous strength. There's no tenderness to his movements- only grace- and it briefly jars Dean with _something is wrong_ before he realises that this Sam has no soul.

'Look, you don't need to be disgusted,' says Sam patiently.

Dean stares out at the road.

'I'm not like the others. I know what's happening. I know why I'm here.'

He can't answer; not yet. Three weeks and this- this is what he gets. It's almost enough to make him sick.

Sam sighs; flicks a fly off one ropy-muscled arm. 'Alright, then. Silence. Right.'

All the while this Sam was with him- God, it must be seven years now- he remembers feeling wrong all the time. It was like the whole world had inverted. Sam was at his side with his warmth and his intelligent eyes but he had none of what had made Dean adore him in the first place. It was jarring. He'd missed Sam all the worse for having this shell- this constant reminder- right beside him.

In that awful week that Sam had spent on a psychiatric ward with Lucifer in his head, nobody had said the words Sam is broken. They'd thought it- Dean, Meg, Cas. But of course nobody had said it. Only now- perhaps that Sam wasn't broken at all. Perhaps as long as he had a soul Sam could never be truly broken. Perhaps this creature- this barren animal beside him- perhaps Sam was only broken when he was soulless.

'You know the real reason why you hated me?' says Sam, breaking the silence. 'And it ain't that I don't have a soul, by the way.'

Dean stares at the road.

'It's that you can't see inside me. No matter how bad you want to. You'll never know what's going on, in here-' Sam taps his head- 'and it drives you insane. And now I know what you're thinking, okay? You're saying to yourself, 'Don't get mad, Dean! Remember that most soulless people are murderous whackjobs!'' He puts his head on one side. 'You know why I'm not?'

'No,' Dean grinds out.

'Because I didn't want to be. I just don't get it. I guess I never caught on to the whole bloodlust thing the way you did.'

'Get to the fucking point.'

'How'd you think it feels not to have a soul, Dean?'

'I don't know. Kind of like being a Kardashian?'

'It's that feeling when you think you've forgotten something but you don't know what. You know there's something's missing- and that's the only thing you can feel.'

Dean says nothing.

'I miss him too,' says Sam. 'S'like a phantom limb. Sometimes I think I feel something for a moment- joy, anger, fear, whatever- and I know it can't be real but I want to hang onto it somehow. It's like going blind and dreaming of colours. I'm aware, you know. Not like the other- y'know- the other Sams you've been seeing. And I know it wasn't _me_ me you wanted to see. But I can help you get him back, Dean.'

'Tell me,' says Dean.

'It's a peace of mind thing. You go when you're ready; you aren't ready yet.'

'So all this- Sam appearing to me- is for, what, closure?'

'Yeah. Call it that.'

'Well, it's not working.'

'Let it work. Sam let it.'

'Is he happy?'

'Without you?'

'Is he at peace?'

'Almost; close enough.'

'So people are vanishing because they're, what, at peace?'

'People are vanishing because they're ready to rest.'

Something in his voice, then; some old resonance of time and tide.

'What's that supposed to mean?' Dean feels cold.

'What the hell do you think's been happening, Dean? The world's tired. The universe is tired. Maybe it'll wake someday; maybe it won't.'

'You're saying-?'

'The world's going to sleep, Dean,' says Sam gently. 'And so should you.'

Silence for a moment.

'But all the miracles,' Dean says. 'The trees-'

'Sleep isn't death; if anything, it's a rebirth.'

'So why are some people disappearing and others going into comas? Why the difference?'

'Think of it,' says Sam, 'like this. Some people only need to lay their heads down to rest; fine. But others are never going to be able to rest, really rest, in this world. In this land.'

'And how,' Dean says- 'how the fuck am I supposed to know whether you're even real or not? You could be- hell- all this could be just a string of super-duper-solid hallucinations. I could have cracked at last. How do I know?'

Sam rolls his eyes. 'Don't be ridiculous. You're making this so much more complicated than it is, Dean.'

Alright; okay, he'll take that. He breathes in deep.

'Will I find Sam if I do?' he asks. 'If I do- accept it? Peace of mind, hakuna matata, lay my weary head to rest and all that-?'

Sam looks out at the road. The amber pearl of a sunrise lies at the end of it, a world beyond.

'It's simpler than that. Go sleep under the poppies, Dean,' he says. 'With Sam. Go sleep under the flowers- and the trees- and the stars. With a brother who has a soul- who needs you- who you can be content with, or whatever. Just go. I mean- God knows I never can.'

_And promise you'll remember me._

*  
A week passes.

Dean feels like he should be doing hot yoga or something, or meditating every morning, or watching the sunrise or some shit like that. But he can't help thinking that for him, peace of mind can only mean one thing; Sam. When Sam vanished they still had so much baggage about each other, were still so screwed-up over each other, and maybe Sam can be at peace with that but Dean can't. He needs to expose them. Feels like he's peeling back the icing on a wedding cake full of dark ugly crawling things.

He tries to watch the news but only gets static. Perhaps the TV-people have gone to sleep, too.

Lots of shops are boarded up now.

*

Sam appears in thick stubble and hospital pyjamas, fingernails soft and bruised, body a sick white insomnia-flower. Dean finds an empty, furnished house- there's lots of those around, now- and settles him in a bed, hand stroking through that poor greasy head of hair.

They got it all wrong in the Bible, you know.' He sounds tired. Of course he sounds tired. 'All the Judgement Day stuff.'

Dean frowns. Touches the fragile shell of one of Sam's mousy ears. 'But I thought the apocalypse we stopped was-'

'No. Different thing. That one felt inevitable, sure, but it obviously wasn't. You can hold back the tide. Moses did. But sleep- that's inevitable.'

Dean strokes his scalp; Sam's eyelids close.

'One way or another.'

*

He feels strange, after that, like he's waiting for something.

The world has gone very quiet. In a day, Dean'll see maybe one or two other cars on the road. Sunlight lies undisturbed over the streets. Houses are silent, lordly things, with long shadows. Shop doors swing wide, leaves scattering over the floors. Sometimes Dean'll come across people sleeping- in cars stopped in the middle of roads, behind tills, in police stations, on pavements. He's very alone. He can feel the emptiness of the space around him, his soul the only one for miles. As alone as standing on a mountain-top and feeling the sky tunnel through his ribcage.

In most towns he stops, you'd think the streets had never heard anything louder than the whistle of wind through open doorways.

*

On a whim, he finds a church; a little one with stained-glass windows and a spire, like a hundred churches he and Sam entered way back when. It's empty, of course. The solitude sets into his bones in that way that churches have; like they've a hushed presence of their own, living alongside Dean, something strange and old and other.

He bends his head and he gives reverence.

Later, he stands up to go; finds himself staring right at Sam. Pale, sweat-sheened, wavering Sam, standing thin as a reed and strong as the sun, red glinting in his mouth.

'Look,' Sam says. He opens palms sheaved in prayer, and shows Dean something. A handful of petals, brown-edged, sticky with blood.

Then he's gone and the petals tumble softly down, catching on beams of stained light, blowing against Dean's feet.

*

He drives into the night. He doesn't see a single car. When he reaches the top of a hill he stops the car in the middle of the road, gets out, and screams at the moon, just to see if anyone will hear him.

Below the hill, fields roll away into the distance, road gleaming black under open heavens. The sky has jewels in its hair. It seems so strange that the stars should go on being beautiful even with no-one to watch them. Dean feels the pull of a huge sadness. Sadness for a sky that has no-one to honour it. Sadness for a church that has no-one to pray in it. Sadness for a road that has no-one to live on it. Sadness for all those abandoned furnished houses, for pink-painted bedrooms and Toy Story duvets and empty dog-baskets and ancient sofas. What a world they've wasted. Dean could be the last one here. What a responsibility- the responsibility of being the last person to love the world as it should be loved- at least until it decides to wake up.

He yells at the sky until his eyes blur. He says he gets it. He says he's sorry. He says give him back. He says take me to him. The moon, white, clear-eyed, stares down, and something about it just makes him furious- makes him want to feel something breakable under his hands. He'd like nothing better than to snap Sam's neck. Anyone's neck. He punches through one of the Impala's windows. He's felt so close to Sam in the past few days, and that's the worst part. Dean's sick of this, all this maneouvering, this danse macabre of Sam-but-not-quite-Sam, Sam-but-not-right-Sam. He wants _his_ Sam, his Sam who's thirty-three and has scarred gentle hands and the beginnings of lines around his eyes and stands like he's starting to think he has a right to take up space. He wants the Sam who wakes up feeling like something's pulling him down into the earth. He wants the Sam he can touch without wondering when he's going to vanish. Fuck this spiritual soul-growth crap; he wants actual, real, _physical_ Sam, _physically_ standing beside him, frowning, taking a book from a shelf, brushing his fucking teeth, whatever. He's not at peace. He _refuses_ to be at peace.

When he's shouted himself out he stands there in the middle of the road. The moon watches him like the eye of some great white whale, impassive. Godlike.

He's not going anywhere without Sam, but God, he's tired of fighting.

'We've done so much for this world,' he tells the moon. 'We've given everything, and now I'm asking for my brother back.'

He says, 'I _demand_ my brother back.'

A whisper, a threnody of whispers, sweeps over the hill. The moon bores into his eyes. Dean looks down.

Below his feet, reducing the road to rubble, struggling up from the earth; wildflowers. Silvery in the moonshine, blooming over the road and the fields as far as the eye can see, opening glowing mouths to blossom into alien glory. They're growing up over the hills, the road, spreading out, flooding this barren land, this pale country, this place where the virtues of all humanity collide and pray together, a luminous sea.

Dean drops to the ground, buries his face in them, and breathes in. Old paper; booming silence; rain.

*

The sun is rising when Sam appears for the final time. Light seeps over the wildflowers and makes them burn gold. Into this rich ocean, where Dean sits in his car, comes Sam; a little pale, a little tired, hair curling at the ends. Still not his Sam; not quite.

Dean sits in the gold-bathed car and waits for Sam to speak.

'I wish you understood,' says Sam eventually. He's gazing out at the sun, as if the glare doesn't hurt his eyes at all. 'I know why you let Gadreel in- and I know you care, a lot- and I think I can forgive you. Not now- but I think I will be able to. But I do wish you understood why it matters to me.'

'I do understand,' says Dean. 'I didn't used to- but I do now. And- Sam. I'm sorry-'

'Don't- don't apologise.'

'I'm sorry and if I could do it again, I'd shoot myself. And you. And then everything would be fine. Better?'

Sam huffs a laugh. 'It's something to work with. I guess.'

Something warm takes root in Dean's chest. Together they watch the sky mottle itself red.

'What I don't get,' he says after a while, 'is why do you still care? Why the hell do you still care so much?'

Sam stares at him for a moment. Then he looks back out at the landscape. He frowns in a way that makes Dean wonder if he's trying not to cry.

'Are you kidding me?' he says at last.

'What?'

Sam takes a couple of deep breaths.

'You tell me I keep you human- you tell me I'm a part of you- you care so much that you sell your soul to bring me back. You spend your entire life running into- _horrible_ danger- to save people. Innocents, non-innocents, cats stuck up trees, whatever. You guilt yourself to hell over practically everything and it's really annoying- but it's because you care so much. I- it's like you've got a gift for caring. And forget- unresolved daddy issues or parent death trauma or whatever. You care- and when you care, you care unconditionally- and God help the person you care about. You- you know every stupid-ass line from every stupid-ass film ever made and then, like, three hundred different ways to kill someone with a paperclip. You're a fucking sleaze sometimes but you're also a fucking gentleman- don't look so shocked, Dean. You hold everyone else together when they should be doing the same for you- and then you tell me that you'll never leave me. And you never leave me.'

Sam pauses.

'You throw all that at me, Dean, and how do I _not_ care?'

Dean has a distinct sense that in maybe a few hours time, when he's had time to work through this, he will be happy.

'Dean?' says Sam suddenly. He sounds worried. 'You okay?'

'Yeah,' he says. 'Yeah. I'm- I'm good.'

He's good.

Sam lets out a breath. His fingers creep up to lace through Dean's. 'So are we okay?'

God knows what possesses him to say it; it seems to say itself. 'We'll always be okay, Sam.'

It's a ridiculous thing to promise. But they will be, now; he knows this. Whatever happens, whatever they argue about, whatever is done to them, whatever they do to each other. There'll always be a tiny bit of them that can't be separated- that will remain constant even they're parted by a million barriers of time and space. And it'll be the best part of each of them, the part that can't be beaten or raped or tortured or smoothed away, the part that sends them walking into Hell to pull each other out, the part that lives just behind Sam's eyes sometimes; the part that means they'll cradle each other within them wherever they go, like a talisman, like a prayer, like some age-old benediction- breathing in the space between them; keeping them safe from harm.

*

Dean wakes up slowly. Has vague recollections of he and Sam falling asleep against each other. He's still in the Impala but his surroundings have changed. Sam is not beside him.

He seems to recognise this landscape, as if he's seen it in a dream. And of course- of course- he has seen it.

He gets out of the car. He's in a forest; each tree is hollow, and unmistakeably alive, knotty-rooted, paled by an enormous moon, the gaping maws of their trunks paled and brimming with moonshine.

When he sets his feet down, he is careful not to tread on the poppies that cluster in the grass; and then he sees that between the trees people lie sleeping, naked, skin cast strangely in the light of the moon. Some of them have hands twined together as they sleep.

Dean steps forward.

Out of the trees walks Sam; his Sam. He sees that instantly. His Sam, who's thirty-three; his Sam, with gentle hands reaching for Dean, and the beginnings of lines around his eyes; his Sam, standing like he's starting to think he has a right to take up space. His Sam, and the soft angles of his body as he moves and the soft angles of his soul in his eyes and that inviolate part of both of them that clasps hands before they even touch.

Dean stands and takes a moment, just to think He's here. He's here. I have found him. Then he walks forward. Sam looks at him- only looks, and Dean reads it in his eyes. _Wither thou goest, I will go; where thou lodgest, I will lodge._

In the end, they go easily and quietly into each others' arms. In the end, they take off their clothes and leave them in the grass, in the poppies, there for when the world wakes up again, for when gas stations reopen and the bunker flickers to life and the Impala's engine makes that old familiar rumble like a greeting.

Where thou diest, will I die; and there will I be buried.

Naked, they lie in the grass, touching all the way down their bodies, staring open-eyed at each other. Sam spreads fingers on the vertebra at the back of Dean's neck. Dean winds his fingers into Sam's hair, Sam's expensive-conditioner-smelling, feather-soft hair; only now, with the knowledge that they will never need to forget each other's faces, do they close their eyes.

And in the end they go to sleep like that, in themselves in each other in the woods in the dream-lands just beyond the edge of the world, and the wind sings in the hollows of the trees; and throbs, and throbs, and sings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much to all my wonderful commenters on here. you've made the posting of this a lovely experience. I hope you've enjoyed it just as much. <3
> 
> feedback makes me very happy. <3
> 
> i'm on twitter as @prunesquallors, if you wanna come see me moan about writing on a daily basis.


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